I am going to obscure the names in the vignette I'm about to share to protect folks who don't deserve harrassment.

Once I had a brilliant young fellow at the New America Foundation, now a prominent national journalist, who wrote about the subject of "hero inflation" in America. He wrote an op-ed which appeared in the Boston Globe that stated that the firemen who died in the 9/11 attacks in New York were not really heroes in the true sense of the term.

In a nanosecond, this young, charismatic writer was invited on to Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox. O'Reilly didn't demolish him overtly; he did it in a grand-fatherly way grinning through the interview that he couldn't believe that this young writer was sticking to his guns.

But for those rubbed the wrong way by this story, know that there were many who agreed with you. I was in Tokyo when the piece appeared and literally had hundreds of emails from fire brigades in my in box -- preparing to protest at the New America Foundation's offices. I was able to secure someone who was heading the fire brigade email campaign and make a case to him about intellectual freedom that seemed to make sense to him -- and he told his troops to stand down.

I empathized with those who felt the writer had been insensitve and in some ways wrong. My own father died while active duty in the U.S. Air Force and had many friends who were firefighters, one in Bayonne, NJ -- very near to the New York action. They are heroes in my book -- but nonetheless, I got what this young writer was trying to say.

The bigger point is that any institution that doesn't take risks isn't worth its existence. And in any risk-taking environment, there will be flops and successes. Embrace the flops, the miscasts, the mistakes. It's part of succeeding next time.

I looked at the article as both a flop, of sorts, but also -- on a different level -- as a successful example of creative, out of the box thinking that was supposed to be going on at the New America Foundation -- and this writer deserved to be protected, supported, given some counseling on "framing", but immediatley launched out again to be a constructive provocateur in the public policy world. If we had censored him, or censored any other of our staff, our organization would have lost one of the key points of differentiation in a very crowded marketplace of Washington, DC think tanks.

Somehow, the fire brigades appreciated the honest response, got the "risk-taking" metaphor offered them, and seemed to be OK that we would chat with and counsel the writer -- but that he would not be fired.

Now John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt -- both distinguished, globally respected public intellectuals -- the former at the University of Chicago and the latter at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government -- are under serious pressure and attack from some quarters for a controversial study that they have done on the Israel lobby in America.

I am not meaning to suggest that their paper is either a flop or great success -- yet. But their paper does provoke -- about that there is no disagreement.

I remember when Pat Choate's book, Agents of Influence, came out documenting in great detail Japan's heavy investment in Washington's lobbying machinery. The book was just as controversial -- and Choate had a very hard time getting speaking gigs at Japan-related public affairs organizations in the United States. I ran the Japan America Society of Southern California at the time and organized the first event for Pat Choate at such a US-Japan outfit in the U.S.

Interestingly, Choate provided a roster of other nations and their lobbyists in D.C. in the appendix of his book.

Those of you who have it around, take a look at it. Israel is not in the list.

Why you might ask? Pat Choate's perfectly understandable response to me was that he had enough grief with the Japan dimensions of the book as it was.

I have not yet had the time to fully digest the Walt/Mearsheimer paper. My friend and colleague "Daniel Levy has, and Justin Raimondo has as of this morning.

There are other critiques out there, and I encourage those interested to look at all of them, but also read the paper itself so that the lens through which you decide to read the Walt/Mearshemer article is more your own than someone else's.

Richard Beeston at The Australian has reported that:

It has confirmed that Stephen Walt, the co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, will be stepping down in June as academic dean of the prestigious John F. Kennedy School of Government to become an ordinary professor.

Justin Raimondo has taken the above reference and asserted that Stephen Walt has paid the price of his "academic deanship" at the Kennedy School for the piece:

The reaction to the Harvard University study by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," has been fury by the Lobby and its partisans -- and a demotion for Walt, who, it was announced shortly after the paper's release, would be stepping down from his post as dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. As the New York Sun reports (via the Harvard Crimson):

"Yesterday's issue of The New York Sun reported that an 'observer' familiar with Harvard said that the University had received calls from 'pro-Israel donors' concerned about the KSG paper. One of the calls, the source told The Sun, was from Robert Belfer, a former Enron director who endowed Walt's professorship when he donated $7.5 million to the Kennedy School's Center for Science and International Affairs in 1997. 'Since the furor, Bob Belfer has called expressing his deep concerns and asked that Stephen not use his professorship title in publicity related to the article,' the source told The Sun."

And since Raimondo's piece went up -- my email inbox has been packed by people saying that something must be done to rally in support of Stephen Walt. Perhaps, but people need to be careful.

I communicate with Stephen Walt semi-regularly and share many of his views about American foreign policy, but I have not communicated with him today about this news that he is being demoted from his position as "Academic Dean" allegedly because of the provocative paper he has co-authored.

Now, I have just received the following communication sent by the Dean of the Kennedy School suggesting that there is no connection between Walt's stepping down as academic dean at the natural end of his term and this "Israel Lobby" paper.

The Dean writes:

31 March 2006

To Members of the Kennedy School Community:

Many of you may be aware that Steve Walt and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer have written a paper titled "The Israel Lobby," which appeared in the London Review of Books. Steve also posted a somewhat longer and more academic version of the piece as a working paper on the Kennedy School web site. The paper has generated a great deal of controversy and significant coverage in the press around the world.

Throughout this episode, I have sought to be driven by one principle above all others: maintain academic freedom for our scholars and our school. Such freedom is one of the most fundamental tenets of universities. I believe we all have a responsibility to stand up for that freedom, and I will fight hard to preserve it here at the Kennedy School. In the long tradition of the University, faculty members are free to publish and speak out on any important issue; others can and will respond vigorously.

Kennedy School faculty members have the right to post working papers in order to facilitate discussion by scholars and others. These papers must be academic in form, with appropriate use of footnotes and sourcing. The school does not make judgments about the content of working papers before posting. Academic work is best judged in the serious give and take of intellectual and scholarly debate. That debate is already underway with this paper, and some members of our faculty have spoken out on the issue. The significance of all work must be judged in the marketplace of ideas, not by the administration of the school.

Some have asked whether Steve's status as academic dean has any impact on this issue. We expect and hope that academic deans will carry on a rich intellectual life as Steve has, and as his predecessors did. Although some in the media have made much of his administrative position to raise the profile of this story and add to the controversy, Steve was clearly writing as an individual professor, not in any official capacity here at the school. His academic dean title did not appear in the credits. And even though everyone here at the school has known for many months that Steve's term as academic dean was coming to an end this summer, some media, in spite of our strong efforts, have chosen to portray the timing as significant. That is flat wrong and unfair.

There have been numerous false reports that this paper was written by two Harvard authors and that it was somehow an official document vetted and published by Harvard University. In part at Steve's suggestion and with the goal of pushing the discussion back into the realm of scholarly debate, the school strengthened its disclaimer and removed the logo from the cover page to clarify that this was not an official Kennedy school document. It is in absolutely no way a judgment about the paper, and the goal was to put the focus where it belongs: on the ideas expressed by two well-known international relations scholars.

Recently Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School sent a request we had never received before. He had written a direct response to the paper and wished the courtesy of having it posted on our web site as well. After discussing this situation with Joe Nye and others, I concluded that this request should also be evaluated in the context of academic freedom and vigorous open debate. We are, after all, one university. Thus under appropriate circumstances, I have agreed to let faculty from other schools at Harvard post responses to any Kennedy School faculty working paper. These will be available in a special Harvard response section, which will make clear that they are not the work of Kennedy School authors. I put my faith in the value of the free and open exchange of ideas.

I know that many of you have strong feelings about this recent work and perhaps about how the school has or has not handled the situation. These issues will be widely discussed -- evidence of the very academic freedom and vigorous response that is so fundamental to our work. Still we must try not to let our ideas and reactions divide us or distract us from our larger mission. It is far too important a time in the world to allow that to happen. We must work together as one community and one school. And we will do that best with free, open, and energetic debate.

Sincerely,

David T. Ellwood
Dean

So, terminated by disguise? or just coincidental?

To put this in some kind of context, consider the case of our current President and his father's national security advisor, General Brent Scowcroft.

Brent Scowcroft was not asked back by President G.W. Bush to serve another term as Chairman of the President's Federal Intelligence Oversight Board when his term expired on December 31, 2004. At a New Year's luncheon at Zbigniew Brzezinski's home, Scowcroft reportedly told those assembled that "The President fired me."

I asked Scowcroft about the PFIAB "firing" on January 6, 2005, and he theatrically declined to comment, but his meaning was clear -- and everyone in the room knew it.

Here is the exchange from the above linked transcript:

Steve Clemons to Brent Scowcroft:

There is a lot of interest about your role, or the end of your role, on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Any comments on health of institution?

Brent Scowcroft:

No (said dramatically; laughter from crowd)

Scowcroft felt he had been fired by President Bush because of criticisms of the Bush administration's management of U.S. foreign policy.

Now, Stephen Walt should be making clear whether he "feels" fired from his position, or "demoted" as Justin Raimondo framed it. Perhaps yes -- or perhaps no.

But what is important in this debate -- no matter how strongly Walt and Mearsheimer's advocates and critics want to plead their cases -- is that it is critically important to not send signals that America's leading universities are bastions of thought control and censorship.

If Walt was planning to step down under normal conditions -- and not be renewed -- then the Kennedy School Dean's letter is very fair....but it's also important not just to send a communication to students and faculty at the Kennedy School but to do something to stand by the right of Stephen Walt to think and publish his work.

When the Toyota-funded "Japan Chair" was established many years ago at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I wrote an op-ed asking whether that Toyota Japan Chair at CSIS would ever "consider" hiring Chalmers Johnson -- one of the leading authorities on Japan in the U.S. but also the then-acknowledged "godfather of revisionists" on Japan.

I wasn't asking CSIS to hire Johnson -- but to keep institutions safe, the hiring of a Chalmers Johnson acolyte needed to be considered. If the answer was no, then the financing of the CSIS chair was not worth the sacrifice of moral and intellectual integrity that it would entail.

Let's hope that in its Deanships and its various Chairs, the Kennedy School does not go down that road.

More on the substance of the Mearsheimer/Walt paper another time -- but in the mean time -- people need to sort out what is real from what is not.

And I hope that this piece finds itself to Stephen Walt who will send me a note on whether he feels "fired" or not for airing his views and research.

-- Steve Clemons

What follows is an email sent to me by former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson.

Col. Wilkerson has given me permission to share publicly:

In fact, in a speech I gave on Iran recently, I stated bluntly that we needed to open a strategic dialogue, we needed to send high-level representation to that dialogue, and only if and when that completely failed should we even be considering "other options".

I also outlined for my audience all the times -- some when we had maximum leverage -- that we refused such dialogue over the past four years. The default decision by the cabal -- after it had flummoxed the statutory process -- was achieved: no talks with evil people, particularly those occupying prominent positions in "the axis".

From the time of Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech and many, many years before -- it was clear that Iran's behavior was high on the roster of key U.S. national security priorities. We knew that Iran was a big nation, a key player in the Middle East, a financier of terrorist activity beyond its borders, and aspired to regional and international greatness, and that many factions inside Iran yearned for normalization of relations with America. It is a nation full of dramatic contradictions -- but it s a nation that needs to be dealt with, not ignored.

Ignoring Iran's self-initiated diplomatic effort in 2003 is exactly what President Bush, under the influence of Rumsfeld and Cheney, did.

Here is a segment from a fascinating article by Gareth Porter that reflects some of Wilkerson's insights as well as important commentary from Brookings Scholar and former NSC Senior Director for Middle East Affairs Flynt Leverett:

Lawrence Wilkerson, then chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell, said the failure to adopt a formal Iran policy in 2002-03 was the result of obstruction by a "secret cabal" of neo-conservatives in the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Wilkerson wrote in an e-mail to Inter Press Service (IPS).

The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address US concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no specific concession in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council's senior director for Middle East Affairs.

Iran's offer also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organization, according to Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell's demand in late March that Iran "end its support for terrorism".

In return, Leverett recalls, the Iranians wanted the US to address security questions, the lifting of economic sanctions and normalization of relations, including support for Iran's integration into the global economic order.

Leverett also recalls that the Iranian offer was drafted with the blessing of all the major political players in the Iranian regime, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini.

Realists, led by Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were inclined to respond positively to the Iranian offer. Nevertheless, within a few days of its receipt, the State Department had rebuked the Swiss ambassador for having passed on the offer.

Exactly how the decision was made is not known. "As with many of these issues of national security decision-making, there are no fingerprints," Wilkerson told IPS. "But I would guess Dick Cheney with the blessing of George W Bush."

In corners of the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and National Security Agency -- as well as in the Office of the President and Vice President, employees of our government -- supported by taxpayers -- are considering bombing and other hard shock scenarios to preempt Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. The truth is that we should always have back up plans, hard and soft scenarios, diplomacy backed by resolve. . .all of that.

But it's a real travesty when diplomacy is never really attempted -- and when the force that Cheney's wing of the foreign policy establishment wants applied actually wrecks American objectives, undermines our goals and interests, and frequently gives the thugs that we are trying to confront the legitimacy they need to grow stronger.

-- Steve Clemons

How did America become great? Some would argue that it was indeed great before restless explorers, settlers seeking economic opportunity, and persecuted religious victims and others migrated here -- and I get that point.

But in the last couple of centuries, America became great because it was the single biggest "brain drain" problem for the rest of the world. The smartest and most talented people in the world came to the U.S. to pursue a higher education, escape persecution, or to chase other opportunities -- and where smart, talented people go, so goes wealth creation, social advancement, and the like.

I am not going to weigh in on the full immigration debate in a short post now.

I believe that America needs to control its borders, full stop.

However, members of Congress have been engaged in a debate that seems to have no strategy to it, no sense of what the nation needs, or what signals we are sending abroad. Smart, brilliant people beyond our borders are now electing not to try to get into this country anymore because the hurdles are too high.

I wrote about this a couple of years back in a New York Times piece partnered with an article striking the same themes authored by former CIA Director and Texas A&M President Robert Gates.

But this in from a Senate Judiciary Committee session on Monday. Apparently, Senator Dianne Feinstein has concerns that too many foreigners are keeping otherwise promising Americans out of public university slots.

Thus, Feinstein introduced an amendment to address the displacement of U.S. citizens by foreign students in public universities.

As she started, Senator Arlen Specter cut her off and said, "So you want to raise the fees for foreign students? I'll agree to that, if it will limit debate." Apparently, Bill Frist had him under real time pressure to finish with the bill.

As a TWN source reported:

Votes were cast, and a provision to raise the application fee by $1000 was promptly inserted.

Where is the debate, the strategy, the cost/benefit analysis of this new tax on foreign students?

A communication from Senator Feinstein's office about this provision reads:

The immigration bill creates a new student visa category for foreign students who will pursue an education here in science, engineering, mathematics, and technology -- fields in great need of graduates in this country.

Senator Feinstein's amendment doubles the application fee from $1,000 to $2,000 and the additional money will be pumped into scholarships and job training for Americans; as well as to combat fraud in the student visa program.

Frankly, we should be doing the opposite of what Feinstein suggests by doubling the application cost for foreign students. America should be promoting foreign student enrollment in public and private U.S. universities to keep America on the positive side of global brain drain realities.

Let me rephrase that -- to get America back into a positive balance -- because right now we are not luring the best and brightest from abroad. They are choosing Canada, the UK, France, Germany, and elsewhere where the border/visa interrogations are less hostile.

This move by Senator Feinstein, from the vantage point I have now, looks wrong-headed, pugnacious, and disdainful of the contributions that people from abroad have made to this country.

Perhaps Senator Feinstein has not had a chance to think through all the dimensions of this proposal, but the doubling of a $1000 fee is far too blunt an instrument to level out any perceived problems of foreigners knocking out Americans at U.S. universities.

Feinstein's amendment should be nixed.

-- Steve Clemons

Just announced. . .Jack Abramoff sentenced to five years, 10 months in prison.

This is too light for someone who so badly damaged this democracy.

Wait....update....this is just for the Florida fraud case. He still needs to be sentenced for federal crimes.

Good.

-- Steve Clemons

(Philippe Sands, Queen's Counsel and Professor of Law, University College London)

On 31 January 2003, David Manning -- who now serves as British Ambassador to the United States -- recorded notes on a secret understanding between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush that their two nations were committing to war against Iraq in March 2003 regardless of diplomatic outcomes with Saddam Hussein.

The memo is extremely important in understanding the pathway to war that Bush and his team engineered -- and this important memo is embedded where it first surfaced -- in a brilliant and provocative book by Philippe Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules.

The "Manning Memo" was featured in a major, front page New York Times story earlier this week.

One might ask why we need more confirmation at this point that Blair and Bush were set on a course for war -- despite mountains of counsel that their focus and plans were off target. In fact, the real target should have been bin Laden, who is still at large and whose personal ambitions to launch a global transnational Islamic radical terrorist movement have succeeded because of the Bush-Blair miscalculation.

But getting the record straight is important. It creates, hopefully, resistance against committing the same sorts of errors again. It makes sure that the trust that Presidents and Prime Ministers depended upon from their publics is harder won next time. One hopes anyway.

Philippe Sands will be speaking at the New America Foundation for the American Strategy Program, which I direct, on Thursday, 30 March (tomorrow) from 3-5 p.m. I will chair the meeting.

If you'd like to attend, RSVP to me at steve@thewashingtonnote.com. The address is 1630 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 7th Floor in Washington, D.C.

Should be a fascinating session. . .particularly given the oral arguments yesterday before the U.S. Supreme Court that America's secret military tribunals are unconstitutional.

-- Steve Clemons

(Meretz Political Ad: Two Sperm Meet and Talk at Airport)

Some observers are suggesting that the new parties and new personalities in Israeli politics have clobbered the old.

I think that the bigger story is that the political right in Israel has imploded. Ariel Sharon as former head of the Likud Party, the party now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, broke apart the vertebrae of the right and shattered the paralysis that had frozen Israel into a long-term self-destructive position regarding its all-important border dispute with Palestinians.

Had Ariel Sharon, who still lies in a coma, died a few days before the election, Kadima -- which drew members from both Likud and Labor -- might have added another ten seats to its tally, but this vote yesterday was not about sympathy for Sharon. In fact, Kadima performed a bit below expectations, securing just 28 seats. But that's enough -- and frankly, Olmert's need for partners makes him more pliable on some of Israel's domestic and foreign policy challenges.

Amir Peretz performed above expectations. Interestingly, his campaign was helped by the firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner which will get at least some credit in Peretz's surprising success. Stan Greenberg's firm was prominently profiled in the recent documentary hit, Our Brand is Crisis, about which I'll be writing more soon.

Peretz wants the government to focus on economic policies that improve conditions for Israel's working underclass and he is a strong believer in "negotiated" rather than "unilaterally imposed" solutions regarding to Israel's permanent borders and other issues like access to and control of Jerusalem, right of Palestinians to return, settlement-related land swaps, and the like. Peretz was able to keep Labor whole, and even moved it up a few notches above 2003 levels even though there were significant defections to Kadima.

Shas, a party of orthodox Jews, that is a likely coalition partner in the new government surged far beyond expectations and is now Israel's third largest political party. Some think that this "black hats" crowd is opposed to anything that would undermine a "Greater Israel". I'm no specialist on Shas, but in the limited discussions I have had with politically aware orthodox Jews, I sense no such rigidity. They are not part of the National Right in Israel and focus more on the religious dimensions of public policy. My sense is that Shas can support the right kind of negotiated Palestinian-Israel deal. Olmert must think so as well or he would not be inviting Shas into the government.

Israel's fourth largest political party is not the Likud, but is rather the new Yisrael Beitenu party headed by the charismatic Avigdor Lieberman -- whose party depends almost entirely on Israel's newest block of mostly-Russian speaking immigrants. Lieberman's party is ultra-nationalist and very committed to settlement protection and expansion, but at the same time must deal with the chronic underemployment and social problems related to his primary constituents. There is a lot of tension regarding the Russian immigrants, many of whom more traditional Israelis do not consider real Jews. This is something I had never heard before -- but the tectonics between other parts of Israeli society and the Russian-speaking segments are fragile.

Yisrael Beitenu will also be seen by many as the new leader of the political opposition. But one of the trends I saw when I was recently in Israel is that the supporters of this party were increasingly isolated from other parts of Israeli society -- and while they have coalesced and pushed their party forward, they may have just hit their upper water mark. I asked the Mayor of Israel's largest settlement in the Occupied territories whether he would become a champion for protecting and promoting the interests of other settlements, many of which have become dominated by the new Russian immigrants. He said definitively, "No", and said that there were serious disagreements among the heads of various settlements.

Thus, Yisrael Beitenu may have a difficult time working in common purpose with other opposition parties if it's own future strength depends upon an agitated and motivated ethnic group that other parties will no doubt either try to co-opt or isolate politically. Given that Olmert has so quickly committed himself to negotiations with the Palestinians, he is calculating that he can get away with bulldozing the supporters of Yisrael Beitenu who solidly support the far right -- but which now have little influence in any of the other leading parties.

Now in fifth, somewhat shockingly, is Likud under the probable temporary direction of Netanyahu. Netanyahu failed to capture the imagination of Israel's security-concerned citizens in the wake of Sharon's move to Kadima. Some blame Netanyahu for inspiring Rabin's death when he failed to speak out against extremist elements in his party who depicted Rabin as a latter-day Nazi. Netanyahu again failed to curb Likud elements who were doing the same with both Ariel Sharon and Olmert. This was one of the reasons why Netanyahu's efforts backfired. He flirts with radicals who tilt more towards violence and force than towards principled policy stands and constructive engagement. Some have told me that chances are high that Netanyahu will be de-throned soon.

On other fronts, the Pensioners -- a new party concerned primarily with seeing to the social safety net for Israel's more aged workers and retirees -- did unbelievably well and probably shore up Amir Peretz's intentions to drive more national attention towards the domestic economy.

The Arab parties also did resoundingly well and have done a good job of securing a Knesset presence more in line with their 20% portion of Israel's population. Interestingly, the success of the Arab parties will underscore for the Israeli Jewish parties why they must move forward on permanent status negotiations. When looking at the entire population of Israelis and Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, the population is about 52.5% Israeli Jew and 47.5% non-Israeli Jew, and the latter are growing at a raid democratic clip while Israeli Jews are suffering declining replacement rates.

The one somwhat sad result in this election was Meretz, headed by former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin who initiated the Oslo process and who is one of the most intelligent and capable policy players in Israeli politics. Beilin is on the left and focused his party's agenda on securing "civil marriage" -- which is a huge issue it turns out.

Rather than focusing more squarely on the needs of "civil marriage" in heterosexual relationships, Yossi's advisors pushed him to make it a campaign for civil marriage rights in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships -- but the ads promoting same-sex marriage seemed to me to stand out more than the straight ads.

Meretz ran one hilarious political ad with two guys dressed as big white "drops" -- sort of like a white candy kiss -- but these were meant to be drops of sperm (no, I'm not kidding), and they were discussing their fears of being born as a woman because women in Israel are often subjected to religious and other forms of discrimination. Then, I think (as I don't speak Hebrew) one of the sperm "hit on" the other sperm and mentioned that he looked forward to "coming out" -- code words that the sperm thinks he's gay. (Note that I may have some errors in translation from the sperm episode.)

I admire the bravery of the ads, and they are certainly far ahead of the discussions America is having on these fronts -- but still, I'm not sure that Yossi Beilin's party selected a roster of policy objectives that would move it forward. The jury is still out on whether Meretz will be brought into government or not. My sources tell me that it's doubtful at this time.

Hope these reflections are useful to those of you who don't follow the political theatrics in Israel closely. There are many sources more informed than TWN on the nuances and historical context of what is currently happening -- but I also feel that there has been a sort of "cartel" of institutions and commentators in Washington who have dominated discourse on Israel-Palestine issues, and I'm intending to help shatter that cartel.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Well, this is big news.

The man who will be Israel's next Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert has dropped his bid for unilaterally settling Israel's borders and has called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to negoatiate the permanent borders of Israel.

Last Wednesday, Abbas said he was ready for such negotiations.

As Akiva Eldar reported:

"You are going into very important elections," Abu Mazen says. "We are in a historic period, in which we must decide whether we will move toward peace and a better future for our children. I can promise that you have a partner for this peace. On the day after the elections you will find us ready to sit in negotiations with no prior conditions. The leadership of both peoples and also of the international community has a supreme responsibility to exploit this opportunity. It may be the last hope to accord the two peoples their right to live in security and stability. The coming generations will not forgive us if we let it slip by.

"If I am not a partner, ask yourselves who is a partner. I am one of those who signed the Oslo agreement and was a patron of the negotiations that were conducted prior to it in secret for eight months. I supported, and I continue to support, a clear peace plan, based on the legitimacy of international law, to which we all agreed, and on the road map. I have called ceaselessly for a hudna [cease-fire] in order to enable the continuation of negotiations, and I achieved a period of calm when I was prime minister.

"I have often swum against the current, but when our public hears from Israel that there is no Palestinian partner - that is something that I cannot explain. . .

. . .The negotiations with Israel will be conducted by the PLO's negotiations unit, on the basis of international legitimacy and the Arab [Saudi] initiative. I am unreservedly committed to the road map, to which you [Israel] appended 14 reservations. If we reach an agreement, I will be the one to sign it. If needed, I will put it to a referendum. I received 62 percent in the elections, in which I condemned violence outspokenly. I am certain that I will also succeed in getting a majority for a peace agreement."

I think that the Bush administration will be a key, if quiet, player in what unfolds. Progress, if it is made, will happen on extremely fragile ground -- but there ia an opportunity here, and success either in the near or mid-term could help generate a virtuous cycle in the Muslim world rather than the negative, cynical realities that dominate now.

This is just hopeful news -- but it's important for proponents of negotiations not to get carried away with illusions.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Amir Peretz actually looks like one of the big winners -- clearly surpassing expectations -- if exit polls hold steady with vote count.

Avigdor Lieberman of the Russian-immigrant supported Yisrael Beitanu party -- a hard-right party -- is also a big winner.

Netanyahu is the largest loser of the day -- and the Likud are apparently in crisis mode.

Here is an update on poll results (120 seats total):

Kadima 28 (in 2003 -- 0) Center-Left

Labor 20 (in 2003 -- 19) Center-Left

Shas 13 (in 2003 -- 11) (Orthodox, not part of National Right)

Yisrael Beitenu 12 (in 2003 -- ?) Right

Likud 11 (in 2003 -- 38) Right

NU-NRP 9 (in 2003 -- 13) Right

UTJ 6 (in 2003 -- 5) (Orthodox, not part of National Right)

Meretz 4 (in 2003 -- 6) Center-Left

Pensioners 7 (in 2003 -- ?) Center-Left

Arab 10 (in 2003 -- 2) Center-Left

This gives the Center-Left a potential range of seats between 69, and the right 32, with the ultra orthodox (who are not part of the national right) at 19.

Shas, as part of the ultra orthodox camp, has already been rumored to be a likely coalition partner to Kadima and Labor, which would take two-thirds of the orthodox seats at 19 and put those in a center-left coalition as well.

I am breaking my earlier vow not to run numbers publicly until official results are announced.

I have listed the 2003 party strength numbers that I could quickly find.

I am doing so with trepidation, but these numbers were just sent to me from a seasoned Israeli political insider.

All in all, this is the sort of result that portends many positive possibilities.

-- Steve Clemons

Despite the anxiety many feel about the elections in Israel today, thus far the polls show the lowest turnout in Israel's history.

This is interesting and may mean that efforts to scare Israelis to the polls, whether the source of fear is Netanyahu or Hamas, are having little effect.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Andrew "Andy" Card, one of the least publicly visible White House Chiefs of Staff in history but someone with a steady, careful management hand who must be given credit for much of Bush's political success, has announced his resignation.

Card, of course, was the staff member to first inform President Bush of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York while the President was reading to an elementary school class in Florida.

Barbara Bush, as many may recall, was reported by TWN to be ready to roast a few of her son's staff members alive on a pig spit. According to well-placed sources, she was encouraging Bush to reshuffle his staff as she felt they had served him poorly.

Now, what about Rumsfeld? what about Rove? what about Addington? and what about neutralizing or retiring Cheney?

OMB Director Joshua Bolten will succeed Card as Bush's Chief of Staff.

-- Steve Clemons

I was one of many who was seduced by the early poll results showing a John Kerry win after the last presidential election -- despite my having reported that Karl Rove's spirits had buoyed in the final days of the election. I had noted that Rove thought his camp was helped by bin Laden's tape released just days before the election as well as Teresa Heinz Kerry's comments that Laura Bush had never had a real job.

There were, of course, many other issues at play -- including some election shenanigans (i.e. crimes) in Ohio and Florida. But those two incidents turned the election around in Rove's assessment.

I also reported too early the polling results that showed Hamas in a huge surge in the Palestinian election but did not report them winning, as Hamas certainly did.

In the Israel case, I am just going to keep my powder dry. The Boston Globe is reporting a defection from Kadima and a surge for the far right parties in Israel, particularly Yisrael Beiten, which is supported by many of Israel's newest Russian-speaking, hard-line immigrants.

I'm still hopeful for a strong showing by Labor and the centrist Kadima Parties, but we have to see how they fare.

It was not the brightest move by the Palestinian parliament to set tomorrow as the date for voting to approve the Hamas-led government. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the party Yisrael Beitenu, has been able to exploit the Hamas victory and make it more tangible because of tomorrow's Palestinian Parliament vote.

To its credit, to some degree, Hamas has been trying to downplay Israeli concerns about near-term disorder, though in my view, Hamas has not been effective.

According to the Boston Globe's Anne Barnard:

Signaling possible flexibility, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's choice for prime minister, told Palestinian legislators yesterday that his government would welcome "dialogue" with the so-called Quartet of Middle East interlocutors -- the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations -- "seeking all means to end the state of conflict and enforce calm in the region."

Haniyeh also called on the international community to "line up with the values of justice and fairness . . . and not to take side with one party against another." He did not make clear how Hamas would find common ground with the Quartet after so far rejecting its demands to renounce violence, recognize Israel, and accept previous peace agreements.

Israeli officials dismissed the comments as an attempt to lull international opinion on the eve of the Israeli vote.

We'll be watching this race as it unfolds -- but no announcements of the winner until they announce the winner.

-- Steve Clemons

This just hit the internet at Raw Story, and TWN has confirmed the essential points through a source close to Rove:

According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush's senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent "discovery" of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Rove has been in the crosshairs of Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson for what some believe to be retaliation against her husband, former U.S. Ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson. Wilson had been an ardent critic of pre-war Iraq intelligence.

While these sources did not provide any details regarding what type of arrangements Rove's attorney Robert Luskin may have made with the special prosecutor's office, if any, they were able to provide some information regarding what Rove imparted to Fitzgerald's team. The individuals declined to go on the record out of concern for their jobs.

According to one source close to the case, Rove is providing information on deleted emails, erased hard drives and other types of obstruction by staff and other officials in the Vice President's office. Pentagon sources close to Rove confirmed this account.

None would name the staffers and/or officials whom Rove is providing information about. They did, however, explain that the White House computer system has "real time backup" servers and that while emails were deleted from computers, they were still retrievable from the backup system. By providing the dates and recipient information of the deleted emails, sources say, Rove was able to chart a path for Fitzgerald directly into the office of the Vice President.

Rove giving Patrick Fitzgerald a path into 250 pages of deleted and/or previously unprovided electronic communications from and within the Vice President's office must give serious heartburn to Scooter Libby's defense team, being paid for in part by this cabal of supporters.

Fitzgerald, as I have written before, is setting a high standard for how public officials should conduct themselves.

We have about nine months before the Scooter Libby trial starts. The real question is whether Fitzgerald will widen the pool of those charged with crimes -- and it's still too early to tell.

-- Steve Clemons

Antonin Scalia, who has already declared his full-fledged support for secret military tribunals BEFORE hearing the appeal this week, has startled Christians around the nation by "flipping off" critics moments after attenting Roman Catholic mass.

I haven't seen the photo, but UPI reports that a photographer with The Pilot, the Archdiocese of Boston newspaper, snapped a shot.

Scalia "ordered him" not to publish the photo. So much for separation of church and state.

Rationalizing what he did, Scalia said "That's Sicilian."

But just in case anyone has forgotten, George W. Bush gave what he called the "one-finger salute" in this film clip, which he thought no one would see.

In the President's defense, however, I've done the same -- but neither of us was walking out of church when we let the finger fly.

John Aravosis has more.

-- Steve Clemons

I find myself intrigued with last evening's installment on The Morningside Post, a new blog launched by students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

SIPA apparently invited Libyan President Muammar al-Qaddafi to speak -- which he did via teleconference.

Qaddafi's views on Libya's authentic democracy as compared to other fake ones fascinates:

A while back, I sat in on a roundtable discussion with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Senator Sam Brownback to discuss a report they co-produced, "Uncommon Leadership for Common Values: Bipartisan Action on Human Rights".

At the luncheon, I asked Senator Brownback and Secretary Albright about the gap between the ideals and objectives of enhancing global human rights and the reality that there are a lot of despicable thugs in the world and that America didn't have unlimited resources. Albright's response -- which I have heard her say now several times -- was that she saw herself as a "realistic idealist" or perhaps as an "idealistic realist." I see myself as an "ethical realist".

Last Thursday morning, I sent a couple of questions to the "Ask the State Department" site that was planning an online session with John Bolton.

"Citizens should not fear their governments. Governments should fear their citizens," V said.

I don't normally recommend movies, but see this film. Revolutionary, and relevant, on many levels.

It's violent, but that's not worth missing the movie over.

-- Steve Clemons

This is interesting. Recently, I was up near American University which is on one of the corners of Nebraska and Massachusetts Avenues in Washington.

The Ambassador of Japan, Ryozo Kato, lives at 4000 Nebraska Avenue, which is close to the opposite corner from AU. I've been there a lot. There are some houses closer to the actual corner than the Ambassador's actual residence -- but still, one can see what's up there.

On the third corner is an AU parking lot.

But what is on the 4th corner?

I was playing around with Google Maps to find out -- and if you look at www.google.com/maps and punch in American University or 4000 Nebraska Avenue (for the Japanese Ambassador's residence) and Washington, DC, you can move the image around and see that there is a huge facility there (pictured above).

Another image from Google Earth follows below.

What is interesting that if you clip "Map" on the Google Map program, the area on this corner where the enormous facility is shows up blank. AU is listed -- but nothing under maps. Kind of like "Area 51". Click satellite, however, and the pics show up.

This turns out to be one of the major facilities, if not the current headquarters, of the Department of Homeland Security. A friend has reported to me that it is the headquarters, but I don't have that confirmed.

In any case, just wanted to report that DHS may have squelched the maps on its location but not yet the satellites.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Economist James Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair at UT Austin, has written a brilliant review of two books -- the first The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs and the second The Global Class War by Jeff Faux -- in the latest American Prospect.

Read the entire thing -- very well worth the education about the Sachs global development juggernaut as well as the contours of his personality but also about economic development trends on this continent via Jeff Faux.

My posting on the Stephen Walt/John Mearsheimer zinger article that is sweeping around is premature as I want to write something more coherent than I can do at this moment (now rushing to catch plane).

But in the mean time, read this -- by Daniel Levy of the Geneva Initiative.

Levy is right on all counts.

-- Steve Clemons

Today, John Bolton is manning the "Ask the State Department" desk.

I have just submitted a couple of questions to Bolton.

Here is your chance to do the same.

-- Steve Clemons

Travel Update: I am flying to Orlando this morning and will be speaking to the Orlando Area Committee on Foreign Relations this evening. If you are in the neighborhood, drop me a line.

What follows below (this is pdf) ran in today's local Washington Examiner, which has a surprisingly strong roster of diverse op-ed writers producing good content.

For some bizarre reason, however, the Examiner is completely failing to link any of this great content to its webpage. Thus, I reprint the full exchange between Norm Ornstein and myself (with permission).

Actually, both of us answered these questions blind without hearing or knowing what the other said.

Washington Examiner -- 22 March 2006 (article pdf with graphics)

TOPIC: THE 2006 MIDTERM ELECTIONS

Steven Clemons is senior fellow & director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

1.) Many think that the political landscape is ripe for Democratic gains in the 2006 midterm elections. Is this excitement too optimistic?

Clemons: If you just look at approval ratings for the President and the Republican Party in general, chances are high that Democrats will surge in both chambers of Congress if not take the helm of at least the House in the next election.

Many conservatives and centrist independents feel that the country is caught in a nasty quagmire in Iraq and that the mystique of American power has been punctured -- that America has shown its financial and military limits in a wrong-headed venture abroad. Showing limits is something conservatives never want to do; they don't want to be out on a limb in risky conditions. They see potential enemies like Iran pushing their agendas and allies not counting on us as much. They see a vacuum in American leadership on the economy with no convincing plan regarding renewed investment in education, in technology, or in some galvanizing grand national purpose. Americans increasingly worry that America's $300 billion price tag on Iraq has undermined our ability to spend on what we need at home. They see a presidency that cares about tax cuts during a time of enormous challenge to the nation, and this just doest not compute for many folks.

Ornstein: The odds are very, very strong that Democrats will gain seats in 2006. One part is the historical pattern; the president's party almost always loses seats in the second midterm of a two-term presidency. That is not random; six years into a presidency, fatigue sets in, along with disillusionment by the party base, a scandal (think Sherman Adams, Watergate, Iran/Contra, Monica, and now Abramoff/Plame,) and often serious divisions between a president and his party's Congressional team. Add to all of that an unpopular and difficult war, and the problems flowing from Katrina, the rollout of the Medicare prescription drug plan, wiretapping and the ports, and it would be stunning if the Democrats did not pick up a bunch of seats.

Of course, they are Democrats...To be sure, contrary to conventional wisdom, Democrats do not need a full-blown alternative program. When people are furious with the party that holds the reins of power, the most important thing for the minority or opposition party is to be there standing when voters decide to throw the bums out (and when unhappy partisans on the other side decide to sit on their hands come election time. The second most important thing is to join together to force the majority to make its policies with its own representatives -- at a time when that is a very difficult thing for them to do. The third thing is to come up with some kind of plan to show that if you do get back in power, you know what to do to help Americans and America.

2.) What obstacles stand in the way of a Democratic takeover of the House? The Senate?

Clemons: The biggest obstacle that may get in the way of political change is an inability of Democratic leadership to coalesce around a set of messages that are coherent, compelling, and attractive to voters. They are trying to hug the rank and file military in the Pentagon as well as frustrated CIA officers -- whom Democrats suggest are just victims of their Republican-appointed overseers -- and be tougher than President Bush on security concerns as we just saw in their reaction to the Dubai Ports deal.

But Democrats are not talking about contingencies in the future and how we should reorganize military resources to meet these challenges. Domestically, the Democrats don't have a plan not only embarrasses the current leadership for mistakes but puts better ideas about public policy on the table.

Ornstein: First, there are structural problems. There are simply not very many truly competitive House seats, perhaps 35 (about a third the number that existed in 1994). More are in Republican hands than with Democrats, but the reality is that to win the 15 seats necessary to get to 218, Democrats have to hold nearly all their own vulnerable seats and win three-fourths of the GOP's. Given the small numbers, each party can pour tons of money into the competitive campaigns, making a sweep of the table even more difficult. In the Senate, the key issue is which third of the seats are up in a given election. This time, the mix favors Republicans, with only 14 seats to defend compared to 19 for the Democrats. Democrats need a net gain of six to make a majority there -- meaning they have to hold all 19 of their own and win nearly half the GOP seats. Everything would have to break their way to make that happen.

3.) What political and campaign strategies do you expect to emerge from Republicans in order to blunt electoral defeat in the fall?

Clemons: The Republicans will keep up a high-fear drumbeat. They will argue that America did not ask to be attacked, that these are times of crisis that called for the type of bold action that is a rare commodity in Democratic circles. They will highlight the inchoateness of the Democratic message. They will argue that the Democratic leadership is out of touch with their base. But when all else fails, Republicans will try to distract voters. If national security is not working, then launch a debate on abortion rights. If abortion is flagging as a topic, then pull out gay marriage. If that grows stale, then gin up the China challenge and the importance of national security investments. And if that doesn't work, accuse the Democrats of not doing more to keep America safe.

Ornstein: I expect Republicans again to play the national security card, but it has gone from an ace in the hole to perhaps a six or seven of clubs. At the same time, I expect Republicans to do whatever they can to excite their base and underscore the differences between the parties-- that means playing their other major hole card, the social issues. So we will likely hear a lot about flag burning, gay marriage, abortion and prayer in the schools.

-- Steve Clemons

(Flynt Leverett on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer)

Margaret Warner, Senior Correspondent on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, had a great segment last night on President Bush and whether the character and degree of Iraq's sectarian convulsions, or "civil war" in the view of most.

Leverett affirms that a civil war is underway. Margaret Warner draws on that great Brent Scowcroft line about "incipient civil war".

James Woolsey says that we aren't in civil war yet -- but that what we have is something akin to pre-abolition "Bleeding Kansas".

An exchange between Margaret Warner, R. James Woolsey, and Flynt Leverett:

Margaret Warner: James Woolsey was director of central intelligence under President Clinton, and he has served on the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

Flynt Leverett is a former CIA Middle East analyst and served on the National Security Council staff during this President Bush's first term. He was then an adviser to the John Kerry presidential campaign and is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Welcome to you, both.

Gentlemen, as we all know, the president and the administration have been criticized for not being realistic about the situation on the ground in Iraq in the past. How realistic do you think he was?

What did you hear, Jim Woolsey? And did you hear a shift in tone at all on this question of being realistic about what's happening?

JAMES WOOLSEY, Former Director of Central Intelligence: There has been something of a shift over months toward a somewhat more cautious statement. And I think his optimism was reasonably moderated, and the realism was not far off.

I bet they wish they had been more concerned with some of their earlier statements.

I think that there is a reasonable chance that the U.S. military's adaptability and abilities will pull this out in Iraq, but it certainly is going to be still difficult. And you also have to worry, of course, about Iranian domination in southern Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: One, did you hear a more realistic tone? And do you agree with former Director Woolsey that it is possible now in Iraq to be, as the president said he is, both realistic and optimistic?

FLYNT LEVERETT, Former CIA Middle East Analyst: I think that there may be some shifts in rhetorical nuance from the president these days, but unfortunately I think he's still operating from a deeply flawed assessment of what the problem is in Iraq.

He seems to believe that the problem is some combination of an insurgency rooted in one of Iraq's sectarian communities, the Sunnis, combined with an essentially failed state at the national level. And he has a strategy that's meant to address those problems.

I think that it's a very different problem that we're facing. We are, in fact, in civil war in Iraq, in a communal civil war, albeit one that's still being fought at this point with relatively low-intensity means.

But the strategy that the president is pursuing to deal with essentially a counterinsurgency problem, if it's applied in a communal civil war, it's not just not going to work, it's going to make the security situation worse.

MARGARET WARNER: So you think that when he said flatly he disagreed with the former prime minister about a civil war that there he just, quote, "doesn't get it"?

FLYNT LEVERETT: I'm afraid that's the case, yes.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think he assesses the civil war situation correctly?

JAMES WOOLSEY: We don't have Antietam and Fredericksburg and large armies clashing. What's here going on, I think, in Iraq is probably more analogous to what was called Bleeding Kansas, the killings between the abolitionists and the slavery advocates in Kansas in the years leading up to the Civil War.

It's kind of a semantic dispute, but civil war really does connote for most Americans something with far larger clashes, and armies clashing, and so forth, and we don't have that yet. It's a serious situation, but I don't think I would call it yet civil war.

MARGARET WARNER: But to pick up on Flynt Leverett's point, do you think they have the right strategy to avert a civil war?

JAMES WOOLSEY: I think that the U.S. military has moved from so-called search-and-destroy toward protecting areas that they deal with. And they're also doing a better job now training Iraqi forces, and Iraqi forces are coming more and more into being able to operate with some American assistance, not completely on their own.

I think the real problem is SCIRI, the organization of Hakim, that is so tied to Iran..

MARGARET WARNER: The party that was very close to Iran, the Shiite party.

JAMES WOOLSEY: Yes, in the south. Because if, when we talk about withdrawing and being able to turn things over to the Iraqis, if one of those groups is Hakim and his pro-Iranian organization, or Adel Abdul Mahdi, his candidate for prime minister, there's more than one way to lose a potential civil war. And one is to let Iran control southern Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain more of what you meant, Flynt Leverett, about the fact that you don't think their strategy is designed to handle what you called, I think, an incipient civil war.

FLYNT LEVERETT: A civil war that's being fought for the moment with relatively low-intensity means.

Mr. Woolsey is right; we're not seeing Antietam-scale battles at this point. But make no mistake: This is a communal civil war that's going on. We are having 50 or 60 killings a day, taking place almost entirely along ethnic and sectarian lines.

The reason I think the current strategy is misplaced, as Mr. Woolsey just described it, it places a very heavy emphasis on beefing up so-called Iraqi security forces to deal with this counterinsurgency problem. The real flaw in this strategy is that what we describe as Iraqi security forces are not seen as Iraqi security forces, certainly not by most Sunnis in Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: Meaning they're seen as mostly Shiite forces?

FLYNT LEVERETT: The Iraqi army is seen as essentially a Shia and Kurdish militia with nicer uniforms and better weapons, thanks to the United States. It is not seen as a genuinely national army.

We continue to train units almost entirely on a single-sect basis, either Kurdish or Shia units, very, very few Sunni units. And if you really are dealing with a civil war, to put that kind of force in a privileged position and give it responsibility, supposedly for national security, it is only going to inflame communal tensions and make the situation worse.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you disagree with that assessment about the Iraqi military? And if not, what does that say about the realism behind the president's assertion, which also Secretary Rumsfeld has made, that, if there's a real civil war, an Antietam-style or something close to it, that it's the Iraqi military that would take care of it?

JAMES WOOLSEY: I think the U.S. Military has done a better job than that of training up the Iraqi military. It's true many of the units are still focused on being largely Shiite or Kurdish and some Sunnis.

But one really has to get the Sunni sheikhs to split off from any association with the insurgency and with Zarqawi. And I think that the remaining Baathists who are part of the insurgency are doing a lot of the killing of both Shiites and Sunnis.

They're trying -- Zarqawi, too -- are trying to provoke a civil war. I think they're not quite there yet, but they're working very hard at doing it.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff at the State Department and 16-year aide and friend to Colin Powell, was interviewed yesterday on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline.

Wilkerson's October 19th speech to the New America Foundation was one of the most important foreign policy commentaries in the last 12 months and will be a fundamental part of any future assessments of Bush foreign policy.

A TWN loyal reader in Australia caught this poignant segment about Wilkerson's political party loyalties:

Question: Now, you were, I believe, a Republican for many years, you worked with the Republican administration and the Republican secretary of state. Do you think the Republicans and the Republican President will end up paying the price, the political price, for this war?

Wilkerson: Yes and I'm very concerned about that as a citizen. My mum wrote me a letter the other day and she said, "Son," -- she's 86 years old -- she said, "Son, please don't become a Democrat".

And I told my mum, I called her and I said: "Mum, you know what? I want my party back. I don't want to become a Democrat. I want my party back."

The Republican Party that I knew, that I grew up in, a moderate party, a party that believed in fiscal discipline, a party that believed in small government, a party that had genuine conservative values. This is not a conservative leadership. This is radical leadership. I called them neo-Jacobins. They are radical. They're not conservative. They've stolen my party and I would like my party back.

The political health of the country depends on the restoration of healty competition between the parties. But for that to occur, both parties have to restore their internal health. Dems need to sort out their agenda and probably need a few internal civil wars in order to move a coherent policy framework forward.

Republicans need to restore their pragmatic, moderate center.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed Note: Thanks to TS for sending this clip.

(Markos Moulitsas Zuniga when in US Army, 1989-1992)

Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft said on January 6, 2005 that we may be seeing "incipient civil war" in Iraq.

David Frum misquotes Scowcroft and wrestles with TWN over the difference between imminent civil war and incipient civil war in early January 2005. While Frum's original post seems unavailable now in his archives and National Review diary, he took exception to Scowcroft's concern then about brewing conditions of civil war in Iraq. It would be interesting to know what Frum thinks today.

Last week, Iraq Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said in a BBC interview and in other interviews that "it is unfortunate that we are in a civil war." He added, "we are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more." As David Sanger of the New York Times reported, Allawi said "if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

General George Casey Jr., Senior Commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer that the situation in Iraq "is a long way from civil war."

Vice President Cheney takes exception to Allawi and says he sees no evidence of civil war in Iraq. In fact he sess success.

British Defense Secretary John Reid also denies that there is a civil war underway in Iraq.

Australia Prime Minister John Howard joins the Cheney-led chorus of "Civil War-deniers".

My colleague Nir Rosen blasts through the spin from 'civil war-deniers' with a candid assessment of not only the Iraq civil war but comments on it spreading beyond Iraq's borders.

Rosen's concerns about spreading sectarian violence are reinforced by the Sunni/Shiite divides in many Middle East countries:

Saudi Arabia ~~ Sunni 89-90% Shiite 10-11%

Kuwait ~~ Sunni 60% Shiite 25%

UAE ~~ Sunni 81% Shiite 15%

Yemen ~~ Sunni 70% Shiite 30%

Bahrain ~~ Sunni 30% Shiite 70%

Lebanon ~~ Sunni 23% Shiite 38 % Druze 7%

Syria ~~ Sunni 74% non-Sunni 16%

(Source: "Islam Sunnis and Shiites," Congressional Research Service, 10 February 2005)

But the most interesting line on Iraq's Civil War recently came by way of a listserve exchange with Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, or "Kos" as much of the blog-reading world knows him.

Kos was profiled in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

I had written in an email that I thought that we had reached a point of real civil war in Iraq and added that "the only question is the temperature of the conflict. . .60-70 deaths a day can easily rise to 600-700."

Kos replied:

The Civil War I partly lived through, in El Salvador, cost 100,000 lives over 12 years.

That's an average of 23 per day.

The civil war in Algeria has cost 200,000 lives since 1988, or
roughly 37 killed per day.

And so on. What we're seeing in Iraq is far more horrific than your
garden-variety modern-day civil war. It truly, honestly, isn't a
matter of debate anymore. As for temperature, it's already twice to
three times as hot of some of the most recent, deadliest civil wars.

He's absolutely right.

-- Steve Clemons

When will Rumsfeld be held accountable and fired?

ABC News is reporting that the Pentagon is now investigating another alleged serious atrocity.

One question is why is the Pentagon investigating? Why not the FBI or Attorney General, or prosecutors empowered by Congress? The Pentagon is proving to be an incapable investigator of its own offenses.

-- Steve Clemons

Today is the Persian New Year, called "Nowruz", and inspired a note from President Bush:

March 2006

I send greetings to those celebrating Nowruz.

Nowruz is an ancient celebration marking the arrival of the New Year. For millions of people around the world who trace their heritage to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Central Asia, Nowruz is a celebration of life and an opportunity to express joy and happiness through visiting family and friends, exchanging gifts, and enjoying the beauty of nature.

Our Nation is blessed by the traditions and contributions of Americans of many different backgrounds. Our diversity has made us stronger and better, and Laura and I send warm regards to all Americans celebrating Nowruz.

Best wishes for peace and prosperity in the New Year.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Well, Bush actually didn't mention nukes, but you can read between the lines that the year will be happier without them.

On a less tongue-in-cheek note, I think that this piece by David Sanger yesterday about Iran and nuclear weapons was quite insightful and tracks with a lot of the commentary I have posted in the past on TWN.

I will be posting more on this subject in the next couple of days, particulary from the viewpoint of what I learned from Israeli political leaders.

-- Steve Clemons

My own views were captured in this lead editorial today in the Philadelphia Inquirer, but I think that this roster of benchmarks that CSIS's Anthony Cordesman sent TWN is extremely useful.

It ought to become the "mantra card" for serious political opponents of this administration's Cheney-led national security team.

Just by way of preamble, in contrast to Cordesman, I opposed the war against Iraq and supported the military action against bin Laden, the Taliban, and incursion into Afghanistan. I thought America had a "thug management system" in place that had Saddam Hussein mostly managed and that the risks of attacking him under circumstances that were not ideal posed the chance of America showing its limits -- which she has done.

Like Cordesman, I worked hard to suggest ideas on how to get the occupation "right" (if there is such a thing) -- such as my New York Times piece suggesting an "Alaska Permanent Fund Model for Iraq." But now I disagree with him about staying and agree with his CSIS colleague Zbigniew Brzezinski that America's presence is preempting leading Sunni and Shiite chiefs from striking the deals that they are going to have to make unless the place explodes in total civil war. That may be coming anyway, with American troops caught in the middle.

But that said, Cordesman has one of the single best rosters specifying false promises, false rationales, failed execution, unclear objectives, and just all the ingredients of an epic failure.

The compelling roster of what has gone wrong makes his plea at the beginning to stay the course and try and work out some good results seem naive, but I respect Cordesman and respect our differences on this point.

Now to his thoughtful piece sent by email:

The Iraq War Three Years On: A Scorecard

Anthony H. Cordesman

Let me preface the following points with the statement that I do not oppose the war, and that I believe we have an obligation to the Iraqi people to pursue our current strategy, to try to end the insurrection and prevent civil war, and help them create an inclusive and stable government.

I believe that we have made major advances in creating effective Iraqi forces, that the US Embassy is pursuing the best political approach it can in trying to create the government Iraq needs, and that we are making slow progress towards taking the aid process out of disastrously incompetent US hands in Washington and making Iraqis responsible for their own economic progress.

But, this should not blind us to the strategic consequences of the war to date. We may well fail in all our efforts because they came far too slowly, involved years of inept execution, and face a scale of problems that we still tend to deny. There is a real risk that Iraq will degenerate into full-scale civil war or a level of divisiveness that will paralyze or limit Iraq's progress for years to come.

It is also clear that creating a unity government with a small Sunni minority isn't going to stop the insurrection or risk of a major civil war during 2006, and perhaps for years to come. At best, it will take years to create a fully stable and functioning new political structure and defeat the insurgency.

As a result, I believe it is time to look quite frankly at the war in terms of how it has achieved it is original its objectives after three years, and consider what this means the need to avoid rushing into wars we do not really understand or prepare for in the future:

Objective One: Get Rid of Iraqi WMD Threat: Happened before the war. The main stated objective of the war was pointless.

Objective Two: Liberate Iraq: Security for the average Iraq is now worse, and the new political freedom is essentially freedom to vote for sectarian and ethnic divisions. Some progress to be sure, but much more limited than the Administration claims. It will be 2007-2008 at the earliest before stability can be established -- if it can. We essentially used a bull to liberate a china shop, without any meaningful plan to deal with the consequences. We have tried to fix the resulting problems, but we still don't know whether we can salvage our early mistakes.

Objective Three: End the Terrorist Threat in Iraq: There was no meaningful threat in the first place. Neo-Salafi terrorism now dominates the insurgency and is a far worse threat. Al Qaida now has serious involvement in Iraq. The impact on the region has alienated many Arabs and Muslims and has aided extremists. It has given Iran leverage that has added a new risk of Shi'ite extremism.

Objective Four: Stabilize the Gulf Region and Middle East: The war has been extremely divisive. It has created a major new source of anger against the US and new tensions over the US presence. Iran, Turkey, and neighboring Arab states have all become involved in destabilizing ways.

Objective Five: Ensure Secure Energy Exports: There have been consistently lower Iraqi exports than under Saddam. The predicted increases in Iraqi production have never occurred, and will not for years to come. There has been no meaningful renovation of oil fields and export facilities and serious further wartime disruption. The previous problems have spilled over into the other Gulf exporting states.

Objective Six: Make Iraq a Democratic Example that Transforms the Middle East: Iraq is not a model of anything. Public opinion polls in region show that our efforts at reform to date have created new Arab fears of US, and distrust of US efforts at reform in other countries.

Objective Seven: Help Iraq Become a Modern Economy: The flood of wartime, oil for food, and aid money has put tens of billions of dollars into the Iraqi economy and raised the GDP and per capita income on paper. So have record oil revenues. Even the latest US quarterly report, however, has oil not only dominating the GDP, but rising as a percentage in the future. Most new businesses are shells, starts ups or war related. Youth unemployment easily averages more than 30% nationwide and is 40-60% in the trouble Sunni areas. As yet, no meaningful sectoral reform in agriculture, state industries, or the energy sector. A shift to focused short term aid and letting the Iraqis manage more of the money may help, but largely a wasteful, highly ideological and bureaucratic failure.

In short, being a superpower is not enough. Fighting wars requires both a realistic grand strategy and the ability to implement it.

We may salvage the Iraq War on a national level, but there is little or no chance of salvaging the war in terms of our broader strategic objectives.

In 821 words, Cordesman -- an Iraq War supporter -- lays out one of the most candid salvos against the White House's vision and prosecution of the Iraq War that I have read.

-- Steve Clemons

The Philadelphia Inquirer's lead editorial today reflects many of the themes that TWN has been developing on the blog and at the New America Foundation where I work.

Although I am referenced later in the editorial, this is how the piece opens:

At the onset of the war in Iraq, Americans were anxious but supportive of President Bush sending the U.S. military to the Persian Gulf to topple the dangerous regime of Saddam Hussein. That invasion began three years ago today.

A March 2003 poll from the Program on International Policy Studies showed 66 percent of Americans favored invading Iraq; 32 percent opposed it. No close call there.

In 2006, it is clear that Bush's war has done one good thing: rid Iraq of Hussein, who terrorized his own people and threatened neighboring nations. The bad man of Baghdad can do little more now than shoot verbal volleys at the judges presiding over his trial.

But Bush cannot claim that this war has so far achieved any other U.S. goal. To the contrary, his administration's poor judgment and mistake-prone conduct of the occupation have made Americans less safe.

The war has been a boon to jihadi recruitment and the spread of extremist Islamic ideologies.

It also has harmed America's ability to influence world affairs. The United States has been ineffective on a number of issues recently.

It's a breath of fresh air to see sober assessments of our situation, even if the circumstances we are in are dismal.

More later. Heading back to DC from Pocantico Hills, NY today.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is what I wrote Richard Armitage and the Plame Case in November 2005:

Could this insider source be Stephen Hadley? Seems odd to me. To many, Hadley still ranks fairly high as Bob Woodward's source -- and at least to my knowledge -- Hadley has only "hinted" that he was not Woodward's source. Unlike Rumsfeld, Rice, and others, he has not "denied" he was Woodward's source.

If he was Woodward's source, I don't think he would have taken the moral tone that laces the commentary in the Dana Priest/Mike Allen story.

Might it have been John Bellinger, who was Senior Associate Legal Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council? He is now Legal Adviser to the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Bellinger is a straight-shooter, fair, and not an ideologue. The activities of Libby and Rove would have offended his sensibilities.

Another potential person is Richard Armitage, who is as publicly loyal to the President as one can be -- but who deploys brilliant knife-in-hand tactics against others inside the bureaucracy and administration whom he thinks are undermining the nation's interests.

Of course, Rich Armitage was Colin Powell's Deputy at State. It is unclear to me how much Armitage would have known about Libby's and Rove's campaign against Plame -- but his sources throughout the Bush White House, in the national security and intelligence communities are legendary -- and Armitage is one of the few people who would have had early warning about the Libby/Rove efforts. So, is Armitage secretly helping Fitzgerald?

Again, there are many reasons to doubt that these individuals are the sources for Dana Priest and Mike Allen -- but they also might be.

I have since been able to confirm that the source was not John Bellinger, and Hadley has essentially denied that he was the source.

That left Rich Armitage, so I am not surprised by this news -- but I have no more information on this subject that I did in November 2005.

Here is a follow-up piece I did on this Plame source for Dana Priest and Mike Allen.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Up at Pocantico this evening at the home and estate of the Rockefeller clan to discuss U.S. foreign policy options.

The op-ed I wrote for a Japanese paper, the Daily Yomiuri, two posts below is getting a surprising amount of attention internationally. I've had lots of email responses.

But let me leave you with this. I miss my pup, Oakley -- pictured above -- as I've been traveling the last week and a half.

But on the Oakley I front, I confess that I named him after the sporting goods company that makes cool sunglasses and foot sandals.

The CEO of Oakley, I've just learned, named his company after his dog.

Sort of a "Matrix" moment. I'll get back on the serious track tomorrow. But the story of the Oakley name is true. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Finally, people are beginning to see that there is a serious gap between Condi Rice and John Bolton.

Anne-Marie Slaughter sums up the state of affairs regarding America's stance towards the new Human Rights Council beautifully.

Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, outlines that although America voted "no" on the Council,

word from the U.N. has it that Secretary Rice pushed hard to soften Bolton's stated opposition to the Council. . .

Far more important, though, was the announcement later in the day that the U.S. would in fact help to fund the Council and would pledge support for making it "as strong and effective as it can be."

According to the Washington Post, debate has also started within the government over whether the U.S. will stand for membership.

These are very welcome words. As Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth said yesterday: "The new council should be a great improvement over the old Commission on Human Rights, but today's vote is only the beginning." The job now is to get ourselves elected and work to get other countries who are serious about human rights elected while blocking, in Roth's words, "governments that systematically repress their people."

The Boston Globe editorial gets it right: the new Council's effectiveness will depend not only on its members but on "the rules and procedures they adopt for their work."

John Bolton -- through the entire debate about the UN Human Rights Council -- had provided little of the "qualified opposition" stance that most State Department apparatchiks around Condoleezza Rice had communicated. Bolton's opposition was strong, unqualified, and total.

The fact that the administration is now communicating a "softened stance" both on financial support of the Human Rights Council, potential American membership on the Council, and is committed to trying and make the new Council "as strong and effective as it can be" is welcome news -- and is a sign that John Bolton's theatrics are being countered by Foggy Bottom.

Just for the record, here is what "stunning isolation" looks like:

Vote on Human Rights Council The draft resolution to establish the Human Rights Council (document A/60/L.48) was adopted by a recorded vote of 170 in favour to 4 against, with 3 abstentions, as follows:

In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against: Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau, United States.

Abstain: Belarus, Iran, Venezuela.

Absent: Central African Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Georgia, Kiribati, Liberia, Nauru.

Now just step back for a moment and consider something.

Opposing the Human Rights Council in its present form was not America's objective. What was our objective was to pursue a diplomatic track that achieved the kind of UN Human Rights Council that America could robustly support.

Why did that effort fail? Was it just that Jan Eliasson, President of the UN General Assembly, failed to work with America or put together a flawed proposal?

Or did John Bolton, our Ambassador, do a miserable job in achieving positive results?

Would Jack Danforth have done better than Bolton? Yes.

Would John Negroponte have done better? Despite many who will no doubt howl about this, the answer is "yes".

Would Paula Dobriansky -- now Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs -- have done better if she had been made our Ambassador to the UN? The answer is most certainly, yes.

By comparison to nearly any other serious candidate for Bolton's job, America most likely would have secured a deal it could have supported.

We achieved little in this stand-off orchestrated by John Bolton other than that rabid, anti-UN right-wingers will be able to say in the fall that the UN set up a flawed Human Rights Council over American objections.

It will be in the campaign literature -- just wait. And John Bolton will get well-deserved credit for that.

-- Steve Clemons

I scribbled the following piece when in Jerusalem and sent to friends in Tokyo to consider publishing. It has just appeared in Japan's largest English language daily, the Daily Yomiuri.

Daily Yomiuri -- March 18, 2006

Time for Bush to Turn Realist
by Steven Clemons

The various denominations that have demarcated the U.S. foreign policy spectrum are in serious disarray and are rapidly evolving into substantially different movements.

During the first term of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, there were three camps vying for control of the foreign policy helm. First were the neoconservatives under the lead of personalities like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, and Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith. The second was a realist pocket of personalities led by the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The third was not a school of thought but rather an individual--the soldier-statesman and then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Today, the situation is more complex. The DNA of these classic schools of foreign policy as practiced in this terrorist-focused era is under genetic modification. Cheney's team combines the muscular Wilsonian idealism espoused by leading neoconservative ideologues with a pugnacious U.S. nationalism bordering on isolationism that former Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms typified.

Realism--the sort of serpentine interest-calculating realism that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger personified--has been incrementally morphing into a "kinder, gentler" realism since the time of President George H.W. Bush's administration, when then national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, a clear realist devotee, began to include in his calculations the global affinity for the "American brand"--how the United States looks to the rest of the world, what its essential ethical character and great purposes are perceived to be--and melded these concerns into national security prognostications.

However, Rice, a protege of Scowcroft's, is clearly taking realism in new directions, adopting more mechanistic approaches to "democracy transformation" globally--and advocating a global democratic values agenda that talks the talk of human rights, individual empowerment, and self-determination--but which still seems rooted largely in realist calculations.

Rice, now secretary of state, for instance, is launching a new and as yet largely unnoticed initiative to get the United States back into the game of discussing international law--everything from discussions about the rights of combat detainees and rendition practices to the international criminal court.

Rice apparently feels that even though there are serious divisions between the United States and many other global stakeholders on these topics, it has not served U.S. interests to be absent from these debates. Rice's plans to get the United States back into the discourse on international law can be seen both as a new strand of realism and liberal internationalism morphed together as well as an unambiguous challenge to Cheney's pugnacious antiinternationalists.

But where is George W. Bush?

Those who note the third anniversary of the United States' Iraq war--that began with a stealth bombing effort to decapitate Iraq's government on March 19, 2003 (U.S. time)--believe that the president fully subscribed to the neoconservative posture of hard-edged democratization and abandoned any pretense of realist cost-benefit analysis.

But given the clear quagmire the United States has fallen into in Iraq--and the puncturing of the mystique of U.S. power in the world in which enemies are now moving their agendas and allies are counting on the United States less--Bush's foreign policy soul may be out for bid again.

Competition for Bush's attention was also part of the character of this administration prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

On March 19, 2001--two years to the day before the start of the campaign against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--Bush was getting a tutorial on contemporary foreign policy realism from journalist Robert Kaplan--author of "The Coming Anarchy," "Balkan Ghosts," "Warrior Politics," and most recently, "Imperial Grunts."

Kaplan had long aspired to be a modern-day Machiavelli, advising "the prince," or in this case the U.S. president, on how best to organize U.S. military and economic resources to unashamedly pursue fundamental national security priorities and interests.

Rice wanted to instill in Bush--using policy intellectuals like Kaplan--the importance of redesigning U.S. engagement in world affairs during a time of perceived U.S. ascendancy. Rice knew that an inertia rooted in Cold War realities rather than contemporary strategy still drove most military and foreign policy decisions, and she was trying to shake this up. Rice was also trying--though she failed at that time--to modernize the "realist church" of foreign policy and make Bush the first major patron of a "neorealist" movement that used realism as a vehicle for limited democratic transformation abroad.

Bush met Kaplan personally at the White House and then they enjoyed a 90-minute conversation that focused on the Caucasus and former Soviet states with Rice and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card saying nary a word.

The bottom line to what Kaplan shared with the president was that the post-Cold War world was dangerous and messy and that great states were going to vie over increasingly limited sources of oil and natural gas supplies.

That meant that the United States needed comprehensive military and economic strategies in these countries to secure our interests lest China, Russia or other unforeseen future competitors tried to tilt these nations in directions counter to U.S. vital interests.

The bottom line conveyed to Bush was that while the president had to "talk the talk of democracy," he had to deal in the real world with thugs and dictators. Democratizing undemocratic parts of the world was a time-consuming and long-term process worthy of pursuit--but more important was that the fundamental U.S. security interests were managed and shored up as "transformative" efforts were pursued.

Kaplan's impact on Bush was evident in part when the president vetoed an effort led by Wolfowitz to use the Chinese EP-3 spy plane incident in April 2001 as a way to engineer a neoconservative takeover of the foreign policy helm. Wolfowitz wanted to feed the U.S.-China clash so as to secure the administration's commitment to a containment strategy on China. It did not hurt that the senior Bush's advice to his son ran parallel to the views of Kaplan.

But Sept. 11 broke the back of Rice's efforts, which were stymied as well in part because she did little to inculcate these neorealist views across the broad swath of foreign policy practitioners embedded across the executive branch.

An interesting contrast was former U.S. President Bill Clinton's famous "think-fests" with academics, in which Clinton would have wide-ranging discussions with policy intellectuals and invite many minds to senior level staff from the White House to sit in and actively participate--less for his people to learn from the academic but more for his staff to sense the president's views and direction. As mentioned, the Kaplan meeting with Bush in contrast involved only three people and not disclosed to the public by the president's staff.

Now, three years after the start of the war in Iraq, new battle lines between these factions are surfacing inside the Bush White House--and the emergence of a potential Iranian threat to the international order is raising the stakes.

The new breed of strident, hypernationalist neoconservativism is advocating an aggressive, military-dominated strategy in dealing with Iran.

In contrast, the Rice-led international realists, are promoting a package of diplomacy, democracy promotion, alliance-coordination, and a more complex program of costs and benefits to attempt to influence the direction of the Iranian regime--or at minimum to insert wedges between different factions in Iran's political order as a way to constrain populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The battle lines are evident in a plethora of issues--including how to deal with Iran, what the right course is in the Palestinian-Israeli standoff, how to approach China and Russia, or an ongoing struggle over the norms the United States exhibits when engaged in conflict--particularly with regard to detaining, rendering, or interrogating enemy combatants.

The fault lines between the factions have been clear inside the Bush administration from the outset, but now, neoconservatives and realists have tinkered with their ideology, toughened up, and prepared for a new collision.

But as March 19, 2006, approaches, Bush would be well advised to spend some time thinking about his foreign policy legacy.

Does he want to leave on the books the image of a United States disdainful of the rest of the world and one that requires either complete assimilation of foreign, particularly Arab, societies--or as a backup builds high walls and fortresses that the United States hides behind?

Conversely, is the United States going to marshal its considerable military and economic resources--and its impressive ecosystem of democratic empowerment and civil justice--and get back to a grand strategy that depends on enlightened--but not naive--U.S. global engagement?

In other words, as Bush thinks about the world's big problems in the two years and nine months left in his term, he has to choose whether he is going to be defined by the image and objectives of his vice president, or whether he is going to stand by the insurgent perspective that his secretary of state is now pushing.

Steven Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation as well as publisher of the popular political blog, The Washington Note.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I had a great evening speaking to members of the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations last night and even ran into a high school pal of James Woolsey, also from Tulsa, who has some of the same concerns I do about our former CIA Director who has benefited too much financially in my view from our war against Iraq and terrorists in general.

For those interested, I did a pretty long interview with Rich Fisher of a show called "Studio Tulsa" on U.S. foreign policy. It will air live at 11:30 am Central time, or 12:30 pm for those of you in the Eastern time zone. The rest of you in Vegas or Seattle have to calculate the time yourselves. My clock is still in Tel Aviv.

The podcast will be available tomorrow for download from the NPR affiliate's website.

I'm flying to Westchester, New York today to attend a retreat at Pocantico that is focusing on the next steps in a major national effort titled "US in the World." Check it out.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Monday night, March 20, 6:30 p.m. arrive; 7:00 p.m. screening.

E Street Cinemas -- 555 11th Street NW -- Washington, DC

8:30 pm short discussion with Our Brand is Crisis Director Rachel Boynton. I will be moderating the discussion and introducing the film.

It's a fascinating and disturbing piece of work about the growing trend of American political consultancies driving foreign election campaigns.

Be TWN's guest, but RSVPS are required to lalwani@newamerica.net

-- Steve Clemons

Apologies to the many New Yorkers who have written about meeting up. There has been some uncertainty about my flight plans -- now mostly resolved.

I get into JFK Airport today at 3:30 pm and am then heading into Manhattan to meet Josh Marshall. I have no idea how long customs, travel to the city, etc. will take -- but I'll post a place I can meet folks this evening in the Chelsea/Soho area. Wish I could give more advance notice, but I just can't this time around.

For readers and bloggers in Tulsa, I arrive tomorrow afternoon and am speaking at dinner for the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations. The organizer of the dinner for the members only organization is Bob Donaldson, Trustees Professor of Political Science, and one of the nation's leading experts on Russia at the University of Tulsa.

I don't know whether members of the public can pay for the dinner and attend -- but I have no problem with it if the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations does not. Otherwise, those interested in grabbing a cappuccino in Tulsa should just call me at the Doubletree Downtown Tulsa Hotel.

More soon. I've got much to report regarding this Israel trip.

-- Steve Clemons

Ehud Olmert, acting Prime Minister of Israel and the head of the new Ariel Sharon-created Kadima party, just scored big in Israel with the mostly bloodless seizure in Jericho of six Palestinian prisoners who were allegedly involved in the murder of an Israeli cabinet minister in 2001.

Many Palestinian have been up in arms, furious with an incursion into their territory, after British and American monitors of this prison and inmates announced that they had departed the site this morning.

Despite the gloss of drama, most people I'm talking to in political circles think that this deal was rigged behind the scenes between Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to some, Abbas indicated through back channels that efforts would be made to release the prisoners -- and knowing that this would be unacceptable to both Israel and other international observers -- Abbas probably laid the groundwork for Israel to come and extract prisoners with the appearance of semi-coercion.

Abbas wins because he is rid of problematic prisoners whose release would alienate Americans, Europeans, and other observers. Olmert wins because this appeared to be a bold and decisive raid, with little bloodshed, and which produced results that most in Israel feel is just regarding these alleged murderers of Israel's Minister of Tourism.

While popular tensions have been aggravated, most think that in the end this high tension drama that ran nearly all day was a product of implicit coordination between the Palestinians and Israelis.

So counterintuitively, this episode today may be part of a broader range of future "deal-making" and may have been an important confidence-building-measure regarding future negotiations.

Stay tuned -- but the word in circles I'm in tonight with sources linking to Palestinian Authority officials and Israeli political and government officials is that this episode may be a net plus to the Israel-Palestine situation, rather than the negative that many of the press are treating it as.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: The Israeli incursion into Jericho has led to three deaths -- one guard, one prisoner, and one other Palestinian -- so the affair was less bloodless than originally reported.

-- Steve Clemons

In Jerusalem...working hard. Oakley says it's time for an Open Thread.

-- Steve Clemons

Two weeks ago, I heard Zbigniew Brzezinski comment that Jimmy Carter had done something that few former U.S. Presidents did -- other than Richard Nixon -- and that was write major articles and give significant oratorical addresses on foreign policy without consulting their former national security advisors.

Bill Clinton probably does much of his speechifying without getting gold stars from Sandy Berger and Tony Lake, but there is still enough consultation with Berger that I'll leave Clinton on the 'other presidents' list for the time being.

But Brzezinski gave Carter robust praise for his bold, serious, and no nonsense comments on the importance of ending the Israel-Palestine standoff over final status negotiations. Carter and an increasingly impressive list of Republicans and Democrats are trying to nudge the administration forward on getting negotiations between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas going.

Here are two items -- the first a speech by Carter at the Council on Foreign Relations which is linked here, and the second a great article, "Colonization of Palestine Precludes Peace," which ran the day before yesterday at TomPaine.com.

Here is a large opening chunk from Jimmy Carter's article:

For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community. Israel's occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet.

The unwavering U.S. position since Dwight Eisenhower's administration has been that Israel's borders coincide with those established in 1949, and, since 1967, the universally adopted U.N. Resolution 242 has mandated Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories. This policy was reconfirmed even by Israel in 1978 and 1993, and emphasized by all American presidents, including George W. Bush. As part of the Quartet, including Russia, the U.N. and the European Union, he has endorsed a "Road Map" for peace. But Israel has officially rejected its basic premises with patently unacceptable caveats and prerequisites.

With Israel's approval, The Carter Center has monitored all three Palestinian elections. Supervised by a blue-ribbon commission of college presidents and distinguished jurists, they have all been honest, fair and peaceful, with the results accepted by winners and losers.

Hamas will control the cabinet and prime minister's office, but Mahmoud Abbas retains all authority and power exercised by Yasir Arafat. He still heads the PLO, the only Palestinian entity recognized by Israel, and could deal with Israeli leaders under this umbrella, independent of Hamas control. He has unequivocally endorsed the Quartet's Road Map. Post-election polls show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel and nearly 70 percent support Abbas as president.

Israel has announced a policy of isolating and destabilizing the new government (perhaps joined by the United States). The elected officials will be denied travel permits, workers from isolated Gaza barred from entering Israel and every effort is being made to block funds to Palestinians. The Quartet's special envoy, James Wolfensohn, has proposed that donors assist the Palestinian people without violating anti-terrorism laws that prohibit funds from being sent directly to Hamas.

In the short run, the best approach is to follow Wolfensohn's advice, give the dust a chance to settle in Palestine and await the outcome of Israel's election later this month. Hamas wishes now to consolidate its political gains, maintain domestic order and stability and refrain from any contacts with Israel. It will be a tragedy -- especially for the Palestinians -- if they promote or condone terrorism.

The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine. There were just a few hundred settlers in the West Bank and Gaza when I became president, but the Likud government expanded settlement activity after I left office. President Ronald Reagan condemned this policy, and reaffirmed that Resolution 242 remained "the foundation stone of America's Middle East peace effort." President George H.W. Bush even threatened to reduce American aid to Israel.

Although President Bill Clinton made strong efforts to promote peace, a massive increase of settlers occurred during his administration, to 225,000, mostly while Ehud Barak was prime minister. Their best official offer to the Palestinians was to withdraw 20 percent of them, leaving 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about five percent of the occupied land.

The five percent figure is grossly misleading, with surrounding areas taken or earmarked for expansion, roadways joining settlements with each other and to Jerusalem and wide arterial swaths providing water, sewage, electricity and communications. This intricate honeycomb divides the entire West Bank into multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable.

Trying to imagine a solution to what seems to be an insoluble, complex mess in the Palestinian-Israel border dispute is vital to American and Israeli security interests.

The status quo does not allow America to move forward a credible agenda that will appeal to other Muslim citizens throughout the Middle East. We may not only lose Iraq -- but may end up at war with Iran -- and may find ourselves with no allies or supporters at all in the Middle East, and that makes Israel's circumstances untenable as well.

This border problem must be solved -- and yes, Hamas needs to put some better cards on the table than it has thus far -- but America needs to get more serious than it has been about ending this standoff.

-- Steve Clemons

Just in case their are any political blog junkies in the neighborhood, I'm working late tonight at a very cool cafe/coffee shop in Jerusalem names Tmol Shilshom. I'll be here late.

I've already been engaged by some very interesting writers here on questions of US foreign policy, Hamas issues, and the brewing mess with Iran.

-- Steve Clemons

My colleague and good friend Nir Rosen is turning into Mr. Q & A on the toughest parts of America's foreign policy portfolio.

Previously, he did this candid back-and-forth, "The Case for Cutting and Running", with the Atlantic Monthly.

Now, Foreign Policy magazine has just published this exchange with Nir on Iraq and Iran.

Read the whole thing, but read this bit on Christopher Hitchens' comments on Iran. Just for the record, some of us -- including General Wesley Clark -- beat Hitchens to that notion. But still, it's progress.

Nir Rosen responds to FP on Iran:

FP: Christopher Hitchens has proposed a "Nixon goes to China" approach to Iran. What do you think of this idea?

NR: I think that's probably the first intelligent thing I've heard Hitchens say in the past five years.

I think that's very important. Had this happened earlier, perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have not won the elections.

The Iranians have been speaking about a dialogue of civilizations for a long time, and Washington has responded only with threats and enmity, really.

I think increased business ties would certainly strengthen the U.S.-Iranian relations. I don't think there's any reason for the United States and Iran to be enemies, apart from the Iranian-Israeli hostility.

I think they are natural allies. It's about time Washington made an overture to Iran. We certainly don't want to miss the boat and let the Europeans make inroads economically in Iran, a market the United States needs.

The Iranian people have no inherent hostility toward the United States. I think such a move would work.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

We have two years and nine months left with our current President, and his administration is again wobbly.

Thus far, he seems to be falling in the polls because of his own actions and their consequences -- not because of points the opposition has scored.

The President rallied somewhat between the period of the Scooter Libby indictment and the day of his State of the Union address, the morning of which conservative Samuel Alito was sworn in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Bush is again off balance -- and it's important that advocates for a different policy course begin pushing hard now, constantly.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Travel Update: I have spent the last couple of days traversing Israel, rural and city areas. I'm now in old Jerusalem and have spent the day talking to people from many different factions here. There is less cynicism here on the Israel side about Hamas than I expected. Sharon's Kadima Party magic may have peaked too early. The Labor Party seems to be ascending again -- as is Likud, though less robustly than Labor. More later on this. SCC

My schedule will not be my own, but wanted to give some updates on cities I will be in in case it is "easy" for bloggers and/or TWN readers to enjoy a cappuccino and politics chat.

Here goes:

March 8 New York (afternoon only)

March 9 Haifa

March 10 Haifa/Sea of Galilee/Northern Israel

March 11 Golan Heights/Jerusalem

March 12 Jerusalem

March 13 Jerusalem

March 14 Jericho/Ramallah

March 15 New York

March 16 Tulsa

March 17 Return to Washington, DC

I'll be blogging through it all. And I'll probably be sneaking out to places and meetings not on the above formal itinerary.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Tom DeLay has beaten three primary challengers tonight in Texas elections -- and this is actually good news for Democrats who want to run against DC's structural corruption. Frankly, I think it's good news for Republican moderates who want to run against the DeLay faction as well.

They need a punching bag and foil -- and Tom DeLay has just given them that.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Skip Kaltenheuser)

A phenomenal photographer, gifted writer and loyal TWN reader, Skip Kaltenheuser, sent me this guest blog-ed (the blog side of an op-ed) today. I am printing it in full below -- and let's just say that we are very glad to have beat out the New York Times and Washington Post.

-- Steve Clemons

LETTER FROM PORTUGAL: A CARNIVAL VIEW OF AMERICA
by Skip Kaltenheuser

Last week's focus on whether Bacchus's glass at Mardi Gras was half full or half empty may have been a break for the Bush Administration.

Media took the path of least resistance and parroted the promo "A Party Like No Other." Baloney. It's a carnival world and has been since the ancients. Carnivals abroad have become a glorious bellwether of how US policies and actions are viewed. The Administration is fortunate Americans are woefully ignorant of these portrayals. Ridicule is far more devastating than lemmings chanting "death to Bush" during a drive-by in south-east Asia.

True, some Mardi Gras wags, such as the Knights of King Arthur, could not resist the material handed them by Katrina, gently tugging the hand that feeds them with floats painted with the "quest for the holy FEMA trailer." and an Elvis sighting in a Houston shelter. But Mardi Gras, wonderful in its unique second line jazz traditions, is too genteel. The now diminished cry of "show me your whats-its" falls far short of the rich antiauthoritarian traditions that underpin other carnivals, including those in nations that have known authoritarian boots, both church and state.

For some years I have chronicled carnivals across different cultures - sense of duty -- and the creative power that goes into scratching an itch called America never fails to stun. This year's sojourn included several sleepy but splendid towns in Portugal's countryside. In one, Torres Vedras, the centerpiece -- not a float, the centerpiece -- is called "Bushlandia".

The artfully rendered sculpture, five or so stories high, offers up President Bush as a primitive king dressed in fur scraps, crowned, holding a scepter with a golden skull and a jeweled club, the skull of a Texas longhorn among the bones before him. He wears a crucifix upon which is a soldier, and sits within the jaws of the skull of the Statue of Liberty, which also hosts wormy critters in turbans, (NONE of them depicting Mohammed). Other heads of state supporting him in Iraq == I get confused as to which are Old Europe and New Europe -- are in his court. The most prominent is Prime Minister Tony Blair, who as W's right hand man fans him with feathers and scratches his backside.

On the flip side, the sculpture has a bearded fellow with a turban (I hasten to add it is clearly NOT a depiction of Mohammed, so call off the fatwa), with a wheelbarrow of explosives he's planting in the base of what's left of Liberty. Beneath him is a government minister struggling to feed the world's poor children. Nuclear missiles flank W, and to the side are penguins with distress or time-out whistles, on the other side toxic nuclear and chemical waste washes over nature.

For good measure, a popular Portuguese soccer coach now coaching a British team is in a lower cave, signaling the press to shut up, what you might call throwing in the kitchen sink.

It's a surreal viewing stand before which all revelers pass. The floats that go by include a sinking submarine with passengers including Blair looking out at a bearded shark with a turban (also NOT Mohammed, OK?) grinning with anticipation. Another has a Portuguese minister, couldn't yet pin down which but clearly his veracity has taken some knocks, portrayed as a giant Pinocchio.

Plenty of religious figures, all stripes, often cross-dressing, are in the passing crowd, honoring carnival traditions of poking fun at gender roles as well as at religious repression and hypocrisy. The crowd includes folk who've migrated in from the once mighty and far flung Portuguese empire as well as locales like Romania and the Ukraine. As far as I can tell the immigrants are welcomed, without the backlash going on elsewhere in Europe.

The Portuguese are hard working folk, with an innocent and friendly manner. As they weren't big Cold War players it is easy to forget they are catching up after a dictator's crippling lockdown that lasted until 1974. They like Americans, just not you know who and the primrose path down which he's led Portugal. Even that most tactful and congenial of all diplomatic groups, folks in the tourism industry, find ways to express that opinion. So it is everywhere one goes.

When you think about it, it's amazing that a small town in Portugal put such energy into making a colossal statement about America's leadership in the world. In humbler but no less interesting Portuguese carnivals, like one in the medieval fishing village of Peniche, a presence creeps in, like a simple float meant to be a camouflaged tank with the ever-present female broadcast reporter interviewing the soldiers as they rumble along.

Portugal isn't the only country taking carnival jabs at the US and its cultural intrusions. My first carnival was in Cologne, Germany, with Karneval roots back to Bacchus of Roman-Germanicus times. A mere month after the Lewinsky scandal broke I almost kicked my camera off a balcony lunging for it as a masterpiece of German engineering rounded the Koln Cathedral. A grinning Bill Clinton, big as a Mack truck, groped a peeved looking Stature of Liberty, followed by a padlocked White House atop which stood Uncle Sam's throwing chocolate bars and blood sausages to the crowd.

The crowd roared approval, they could take a joke even if Senator Lieberman couldn't. The Germans couldn't understand our mania over this fiasco while more pressing worldly concerns drifted into the fire.

Carnival levity is still about, but with the Bush administration it's become more pointed, sharper, even beseeching. Last year Cologne, despite rumors of official urgings to soften up as a visit from President Bush approached, ginned up a float of a giant Uncle Sam bent over, trousers down, while Angela Merkel climbed a ladder up his backside, her nose a shade darker than usual. Another had Bush holding a cross like a machine gun, flames shooting out of it.

This year's Cologne floats portrayed an American Eagle with bird flu, and President Bush walking barefoot through bowls of fat labeled "Kyoto", "New Orleans" and "Atomic Conflict". Chancellor Merkel fared better, portrayed as Elastigirl from "The Incredibles". Carnival in Dusseldorf offered up Iran's President as a rocket, caught by a United Nation's net, (not, ahem, a US net).

In carnival, the Germans have made schadenfreude an art form. If only Vice-President Cheney had given the German engineers more lead time, think what they could have done with the great hunter!

In Nice, France, where floats are based on sketches submitted by cartoonists from around the world, this year's theme was "King of Dupes". A prominent float was of a dove of peace recreated as a camouflaged fighter-bomber, missiles hanging from its wings. Another was of a movie film set of the US moon walk. While no one really doubts the walk, it may speak to diminished US credibility.

Basel, Switzerland is where the US really gets the treatment. Basel carnival is a unique Protestant take that begins in a blacked-out city at 4 AM the Monday after Ash Wednesday. Masked pipers and drummers accompany huge gas lit lanterns painted with satirical images including shots at local, regional, and international politics, as well as the church and concerns like global warming.

Bear in mind these are the Swiss, normally big fans of the US, but when I was there two years ago the chief target far and away was W. The US was given the business in multiple lanterns and in the costumes of bands, including the large brass bands that come out Tuesday night, intentionally playing off-key. And again, the US takes a big hit in satirical poems in the local dialect, recited Wednesday night throughout Basel's pubs.

I recall one of the more benign depictions, a large drummer's mask of a scowling W with a harlequin on top relieving himself. I fear this year there was little holding back on W. His runner-up on Basel's world stage is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with whom President Bush recently made his bones when Berlusconi visited Congress last week to give it a pep talk. The Swiss despise Berlusconi and relish portraying him as a cross between the Godfather and Il Dulce Mussolini, running the media like an Orwellian villain. Great company.

It's a pity Washington, DC can't pick up the carnival banner and its best satirical traditions. If small towns in Portugal can use carnival to speak truth to power, why can't the nation's capital, with all the fantastic material it has to work with?

Are we too mean-spirited, too unable to take a joke? The threat of ridicule at carnival might reign in excesses, perhaps an invasion.

Think of carnival's pagan roots back to the Titans, to the rites of spring, chasing the winter demons away, to hopeful fertility, to planting anew. Ultimately, when the church figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, traditions fused with rebirth and redemption. The carnival spirit, sometimes portrayed as a fish deity -- like the Portuguese cod -- is burnt in effigy as Lent is ushered in. Though it promises to return, as the flames rise the spirit takes with it the cares and woes of the prior year, letting everyone begin again with a clean slate.

Has there ever been a city more in need of a do-over than Washington, DC?

Skip Kaltenheuser's works has appeared in more than 100 domestic and international publications. He is a free-lance journalist and photographer. This is Kaltenheuser's first Blog-Ed.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS:

Bush in Basel

BUSHLANDIA (large version)

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Just posted this over at Bolton Watch in response to Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Lee Feinstein's call for a jousting match between our positions on Bolton and the UN Human Rights Council.

Someday I need to explicate for various Bolton-watchers like my colleagues and friends Ivo Daalder and Lee Feinstein the Japanese distinction between tatemae ("surface" or "appearance") and honne ("reality").

I'm concerned with Bolton's honne while I think that they are distracted by our UN Ambassador's tatemae.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE: New TWN correspondent Sameer Lalwani provides a nice write-up on John Bolton's comments Sunday morning at the annual AIPAC public policy conference.

Air Force Two flew into Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood Airport late this morning and just shut the ENTIRE airport down.

Nothing could leave. Nothing could land.

I was there, one of those stuck while our imperial and imperious Vice President and his team, shut down an entire airport.

Don't we have enough military bases that Cheney can leave the private sector runways alone?

Cheney was stumping for Republican Congressman Clay Shaw who represents parts of Palm Beach and Broward Counties in Florida's 22nd District. He is considered by National Journal to be the most vulnerable incumbent in Congress."

CLAY SHAW everyone. Cheney was there shutting down the airport, the highways, making many miss connections, at huge cost to the private sector and to taxpayers on behalf of Rep. Clay Shaw.

Though challenger Ron Klein will no doubt get a bump out of Cheney's travel-snares, there should be some restrictions barring the wannabe-but-not-quite president from disrupting normal life, particularly just to get to a fundraiser.

Cheney apparently flew into the Southwest Florida International Airport this evening as well and got traffic "roiled" there as well.

Cheney is doing a fundraiser for Peter Roskam on Monday, March 13th in Addison, Illinois. Roskam is trying to succeed retiring Republican House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde in Illinois' 6th Congressional District.

While Schaumburg Regional Airport may be too small and insignificant an airport for someone of Vice President Cheney's stature, it really is a nice place and would be easier on private travelers if Cheney flew through there.

The only near alternative is Chicago O'Hare.

I may have to be in Chicago on March 13th -- and I am going to make sure that many of Roskam's rich Elmhurst "potential" constituents know that he screwed up their travel day as Cheney's train of pomp and circumstance ruins everyone's Monday.

-- Steve Clemons

The Dubai Ports World controversy has unfortunately demonstrated that the only bipartisanship out there right now is in matters of fear.

Many leaders in both parties have condemned the deal that would turn over operations and management of several major U.S. ports, including the one in Miami -- which I am viewing from a spot about 30 stories high overlooking the port.

DP World CEO Mohammed Sharaf has suggested that Americans need to become more educated about the global character of his firm.

I have the same kinds of concerns about DP World that I would have about any major port operations firm -- be it from Japan, China, Korea, Greece, Holland, Indonesia, or any other nation.

There is an accute historical amnesia problem in Washington. In September 1997, Hal Creel, then Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, threatened to hold Japanese ships at U.S. ports because of corruption problems at Japanese ports.

This case differed from the Dubai Ports Worldwide case mostly because the Japanese were not trying to take over U.S. ports -- but the corruption in Japan's stevaedore operations was having a seriously negative impact on the U.S. shipping industry. Given the high level of corruption that existed in this pre-9/11 setting in Japan accompanied with the reality that the 30,000 member strong Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult had gassed to death innocent people in the Marunouchi subway line.

It is not hard to imagine Japan's then-shipping operations being penetrable to those who would do others harm by shipping WMD-related materials in port containers.

I watched yesterday many numbers of ships like the one above moving in and out of Miami's port, and it should concern all Americans that only 5% of these containers are undergoing inspection -- even when it comes to radiation sensing.

Many Americans -- Republicans, Democrats, and Independents -- don't trust the Dubai Ports Worldwide deal because fundamentally they don't trust the UAE during this time of serious tension with the Middle East.

But the deeper issue is that we have slipped from a "High Trust" type of globalization to "High Fear Globalization." People, products, money, and ideas are just not going to move through the world in the same contours they once did -- and this port ownership debate is another part of this trend.

Americans need to realize that we have created a highly fragile system for ourselves in which concern about who owns our ports ought to be matched by who owns our debt and the future value of the dollar. While many Americans worried about the sale of Unocal to a Chinese state-owned firm, the bigger issue in my mind is that many of the crown jewels of the semiconductor design and production business are slipping to China.

It is right to be concerned about port safety -- no matter who owns and operates the port. We need redundant layers of security in this country, but we need to equally aware of the fact that American quality of life is less and less a function of our own productive capacity. Those who control the "temperature" of the American economic and US consumption live in Asia and the Middle East today.

Thus, what I hope these hot-and-bothered Democratic and Republican politicians pounding their feet over the DP World deal do is to transform this debate into one long overdue about basic port and border security which we do not have in place -- though George Bush has had no problem spending money on lots of his other priorities.

Here is one last question that Senators should pose to the President, however:

After 9/11, Reagan National Airport was shut down longer than any other airport in the United States because of fears of its proximity to major government sites. It finally opened after a number of screening and new airline and passenger management practices were put into place. Would George Bush ever allow Dubai Ports World -- if an airport management service owner -- to purchase control of Reagan National?

Even though I think that the "issue" is container security and screening, if the answer to the question above is "no", then the Dubai Ports World deal and all other such deals with foreign operators of major nodes of U.S. infrastruture should be rejected.

But to reject, America must get itself off the narcotic of cheap foreign financing and inbound investment that are limiting our ability to say "no".

-- Steve Clemons

There are numerous legitimate concerns about Russia's slip back towards authoritarian-style governance, but at the same time, Russia turns out to be an increasingly important global player.

On Iran, Russia has been diplomatically creative and courageous in the deals it has offered to relieve stress in a brewing Iran-U.S./Europe stand-off on Iran's nuclear pretensions. While there is no deal yet, Russia gets points for dealing directly with Iran -- something America has managed to do with North Korea bilaterally and multilaterally but which we resist doing with Iran.

Also, it has just received the top Hamas leadership and is working to help Hamas better understand its options and choices regarding Israel and the needs of its Palestinian constituents.

These are healthy moves.

-- Steve Clemons

A loyal reader sent me this picture taken by his friend of Boston Mayor Tom Menino.

First of all, the guns pointing at the Mayor are scary enough, but over his right shoulder, check out the billboard depicting President Bush's eyes with the line "Little Brother is Watching".

It turns out that the billboard is linked to its own site -- and is essentially pushing a word-of-mouth campaign for citizen vigilance about protection of American civil liberties.

Thanks to DJ for sending.

-- Steve Clemons

Travel Update: TWN is in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale today for some meetings and long runs. No coffee sessions planned here -- but look for me running on the beaches.

John Bolton is a very smart guy -- a tough, pugnacious, thumb-in-them-there-foreigners-eye kind of guy.

A few days ago, remarkably both the New York Times and the Washington Post lauded our recess-appointed American Ambassador to the United Nations for holding out for a UN Human Rights Council that met a higher bar.

The editorial writers for those papers did not call me before they wrote those sycophantic pieces. If they had, they might have learned a bit more regarding the background about Ambassador Bolton and this Human Rights Council debate.

First of all, Ambassador Bolton failed to even attend all but one of the thirty plus negotiations that occurred about the Human Rights Council.

Secondly, these editorialists should have worked harder to discern the differences in nuance, language, and posture between the official State Department position and what John Bolton has been conveying. Bolton knew that the 2/3 voting requirement for HRC membership was the key point for the US and he failed to emphasize this to UN General Assembly President Jan Eliasson, who was attempting to placate the Europeans who had backed away from this voting rule.

Had Bolton been more emphatic when it counted, Eliasson might have arm-twisted the Europeans more vigorously.

But what really bothers me about this John "human rights crusader" Bolton fiction that the Times and Post have created is that John Bolton has been sour about the Human Rights Council for four months. He began winding down expectations of a positive outcome at the end of last October. His press operation is very impressive and expertly managed in my view.

But he has kept up this theme saying nothing would come from the Human Rights Council negotiations through November, December, January, and through his tenure as President of the UN Security Council in February.

Where was John Bolton's pugnacious commitment to getting this Council set up right these last four months? The answer is that he has been trying to kill the Council all this time and attempting to knock yet another key pillar out of America's engagement with the UN.

TWN has also learned from multiple sources that John Bolton has done more than 70 editorial and press meetings and calls encouraging the notion that the press could "demonstrate objectivity" by supporting his position against Eliasson's Human Rights Council proposal and holding out for something better.

Again, all good credit to his media staff -- but Bolton has been emphasizing the failure of the Human Rights Council negotiations and did little to transmit to Eliasson what the key provisions America required in the draft were.

True to form, Bolton is publicizing a breakdown that he considers runs against American interests -- while doing nothing to publicize what would have clearly been in American interests while the negotiations were underway the last four months.

One of the provisions that Bolton opposes is one that involves regional slates of candidates. Regions can propose candidate nations to fill a specified number of slots on the HRC. However, any individual nation -- if it fails to earn a majority of votes in the UN General Assembly -- will not be allowed to ascend from the regional slate to the Human Rights Council. The U.S. believes that these slates will still produce some rosters of outrageous human-rights abusers.

What is odd is that if the U.S. were deeply and seriously worried about this provision, the normal process for trying to get the matter resolved or renegotiated is for the US Mission to share its concerns with NGOs involved and the office of Jan Eliasson, the President of the UN General Assembly. According to several NGO representatives, this matter was mentioned during the NGO briefing meeting by the US Mission in the final week of negotiations. . .the final week.

At some point, one has to go back and not only weigh the laudable goals Bolton is expressing as his objectives for the structure of the Human Rights Council but also the manner in which he pursued this end all along.

Bolton is saying some impressive things about what the Human Rights Council out to be -- but he helped design the impasse that America is in by doing little to help us achieve our objectives.

Former Senator Tim Wirth, President of the UN Foundation has sent a letter and a Human Rights Commission/Human Rights Council Comparison Grid to Congressional leaders.

Specifically, he suggests that even the Human Rights Council that has been negotiated is better by far than the old operation.

He writes:

The proposed Council would have several key improvements over the Human Rights Commission. These include:

~ A new requirement that Council members be voted on by an affirmative vote of a majority of the General Assembly -- or 96 countries. For comparison's sake, the provision that the United States is advocating would allow for members to be voted onto the Council by a two-thirds majority of those present and voting in the General Assembly -- a number that could range between 100 and 120 votes, depending on abstentions. Also for comparison, the Commission on Human Rights allowed countries to become members by appointment from regional groups.

~ A new provision allowing Council members to be suspended at any time if they commit gross and systematic human rights violations.

~ Providing meetings throughout the year, not just once a year, making the Council more responsive to real time human rights emergencies.

These make sense to me.

But there is a serious question that has been rolling around in my head -- and perhaps I am missing something in this debate that I have not yet seen which covers the matter -- but how did John Bolton think that the U.S. was going to get on the Human Rights Council with a 2/3 voting requirement?

I now understand why he lobbied hard -- and beyond his State Department mandate -- to get the Permanent 5 Members of the Security Council on to the HRC because in the current geopolitical climate, support for America on the Commission may not run so robustly.

Some have suggested that there is a de facto stance that all members of the UN Security Council can float on and off of UN Councils at will, but I need to look further into this. But if this is not in fact the case, America's own membership is helped by the majority rule vote and harmed by the 2/3 figure.

More later on this brewing matter. And just in closing, I feel strongly that John Bolton should be given credit for the constructive things he does -- full stop.

But just as well, I don't believe in assigning him credit for his lofty Human Rights Council stance when it is clear that he's been trying to poison the environment and keep the key negotitors guessing all this time.

Bad John Bolton, bad.

-- Steve Clemons

One way to find out is to file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out.

FOIARequest.org looks like an intriguing new site.

-- Steve Clemons

Israel must sort out its political tectonics in its election on March 28th, and then the emergent Israeli leadership, regardless of victor, should move forward in negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas a "final status" deal defining the boundaries of tomorrow's Israel and Palestine.

Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, lays out the plan in a compelling op-ed today in the New York Times, "What the P.L.O. Has to Offer".

All that is missing in his sensible comments about the importance of moving now on final status negotiations is a date.

TWN proposes that Monday, April 24th be the start date of such serious negotiations -- and if not the formal start of table-to-table talks then at least the start of laying the groundwork for such talks.

This start date gives Israel more than three weeks to digest the outcome of its election and to sort out its negotiating stance. Israel should move forward with a credible plan, working with individuals like Abbas, Erekat and others -- with the presumption that Hamas will cooperate. The world will be watching, and if Hamas fails to perform, then at least what has been achieved is that Israel has demonstrated a serious willingness to work out a land deal that might have been reasonable.

I spent about an hour with the charismatic Saeb Erekat last December at his offices in Jericho, and I have rarely met anywhere a more dynamic politician -- and democratic advocate to the core.

While a member of Fatah, from my assessment then and since, it's clear that Erekat is on the reform edge of his otherwise corrupt party -- and he works hard to keep his constituents in Jericho believers in his leadership, which is what democratically-minded politicians competing with other potential rivals should do.

Erekat opens his interesting piece:

Many have argued that Hamas's winning of a decisive majority in the Palestinian Parliament provides yet another setback for peace and democracy in the Middle East. Some have even suggested that it vindicates Israeli unilateralism. I, however, think the opposite is true: A negotiated and lasting peace may now be closer than many of us could have imagined just weeks ago.

The parliamentary elections could be seen as a referendum on the leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas, who came to office a year ago after winning nearly two-thirds of the popular vote. Mr. Abbas ran on a platform of job creation, internal security and a negotiated resolution of the conflict with Israel based on two states living side by side in peace.

Many people believe that Mr. Abbas did not deliver. Today, there are fewer jobs, not more; security for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Gaza Strip is worse, not better; and negotiations, like the two-state solution, are stalled.

Mr. Abbas, however, is not ultimately to blame. When he called on Israel to lift restrictions on Palestinian movement and trade within and between Palestinian areas, Israel refused — despite similar calls from the World Bank, the United Nations, the European Union and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The restrictions translated not just into more poverty but also into less security, for Mr. Abbas could not even move police forces within Palestinian territory.

President Abbas did deliver, and largely maintained, a "tahdia" -- a "period of calm" between the Palestinian factions and Israel. And he was able to do this despite scores of Palestinian deaths and several thousand military raids and arrests that Israel conducted in violation of its agreement not to undertake such activities. Israel also tightened its control over key territory, resources and markets -- primarily occupied East Jerusalem -- that we will need to build an economically viable state.

So, President Abbas, the leader of the Fatah party, made a set of campaign promises; the opposite came to fruition; therefore, Palestinians elected the only alternative: Hamas.

In reality, however, the vote was neither a rejection of President Abbas and his peace program nor an endorsement of the Hamas charter. According to recent polls, nearly 70 percent of Palestinians still support Mr. Abbas as president. And 84 percent of Palestinians still want a negotiated peace agreement with Israel. Even among Hamas voters, more than 60 percent of those polled support an "immediate" resumption of negotiations.

The Palestinians -- in all polls that I have seen -- want negotiations with Israel. To want negoatiations with Israel is de facto recognition of Israel, and at minimum, is recognition of the realities of co-existence.

It is not serious at this point to seriously entertain the cliche that many Israel leaders have promulgated that they have no negotiating partner. That is not true -- and if they fail to move forward with Abbas, using the trappings of legitimacy that Abbas and his office still have in the eyes of the Palestinian people, then Israel and the Palestinians will be a victim of this missed opportunity.

Let me share something that Saeb Erekat told me when he met:

If Israel does nothing, if Israel avoids negotiations using the fake excuse that they have no negotiating partner, we Palestinians are fine.

We will just wait. Our population is growing faster than theirs, and when we are the majority, we will simply vote our will in a democratic state.

Today, the population difference between Israelis and Palestinians is 53% to 47% respectively.

Israel's motivations lie there. Israel must resolve this battle over borders, or a unified state will find them in a minority.

I had originally thought that April 17th would be the right start date, but that date falls in the middle of Passover, which ends at sundown on Thursday, April 20th. Just so that all parties can be on board, this process should begin without haste on Monday, April 24th.

Since Sunday is a work day on the Israel and Palestinian side, this will give one prep day at the beginning of the week before these proposed negotiations begin. April 24th, Monday, is the right day for Israel and Mahmoud Abbas to move forward.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed Note: Thanks to DA for educating me on Passover dates.